In September 2024, the joint project "RoX," funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), officially started. The goal of the project is to establish a digital ecosystem that facilitates or even enables the use of innovative AI-based robotic solutions in various practical applications and industries. The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) contributes its expertise in developing innovative AI methods and simulation technologies to optimize robotic systems.
The use of AI-based robotic systems offers enormous potential to strengthen industries that rely on high efficiency and flexibility of robotic systems. This particularly includes manufacturing companies as well as the logistics and service sectors. The robotics market is expected to experience significant growth in the coming years. To fully exploit this potential, the RoX project aims to elevate robotic systems to a new level of performance through advanced robotics components, artificial intelligence (AI), and a digital ecosystem. This will shorten innovation cycles and significantly improve system integration and commissioning.
Efficient Solutions through Practical Research The high complexity of AI-based robotic systems cannot be covered or mastered by any single market participant alone. Therefore, RoX involves a consortium of businesses and research institutions cooperating across company boundaries. The focus is on practical use cases that address the current needs of the industry and offer innovative, transferable solutions. Key application areas include: • Loading and unloading processes along the entire logistics chain • Picking processes in unstructured environments • Multifunctional and location-flexible robotic systems in production • AI-based commissioning of robotic systems In these areas, the feasibility and practical applicability of the developed solutions are demonstrated and evaluated for their potential for continuous development and scalability.
DFKI Contributes Expertise in Various Use Cases Together with partners, the DFKI Robotics Innovation Center is working on several use cases for AI-based solutions to create more flexible and efficient robotics in industry. This includes the co-development of a robotic system for the automated cleaning of molds in the pharmaceutical industry to replace the previously manual cleaning process. DFKI optimizes the form and function of robotic grippers and uses simulation-based learning methods to analyze gripping and movement patterns. Another use case focuses on the intuitive programming of robots, enabling professionals without specialized knowledge to easily reprogram them. In this context, DFKI is developing solutions for flexible robot configuration, precise object representation, and automatic behavior control, which significantly simplify commissioning. Additionally, DFKI is involved in the planning and optimization of multi-robot cells for complex tasks such as painting and gluing. The goal is to make robot-based processing of variable workpieces, such as in automotive manufacturing, more efficient through AI-supported path and process optimization. For this purpose, DFKI is developing tools for optimizing path planning and integrating robot simulations to enhance efficiency.
Integration of Developed Solutions into the Digital Ecosystem To develop a scalable digital ecosystem for AI-based robotics, RoX focuses on integrating the developed, practical solutions into development and application environments, providing quality-assured software components and AI models, and designing semantic models and metadata structures. Data security of the robotic ecosystem and networking with international initiatives are also addressed as integral components. The organizational structure ensures that the developed software components, semantic models, and the digital ecosystem are made available and further developed beyond the project's end. Thus, RoX will make a significant contribution to the future of AI-based robotics and sustainably strengthen the innovative capacity of the participating industries.
Partners
ABB AG, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR), Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI), Fiege Logistik Stiftung & Co. KG, Gluth Systemtechnik GmbH, RIF Institut für Forschung und Transfer e.V., Intrinsic Innovation GmbH, INVITE GmbH, Mercedes-Benz AG, Roboception GmbH, Robomotion GmbH, SCHUNK SE & Co. KG, SOTEC GmbH & Co. KG, T-Systems International GmbH, VDMA Robotics + Automation, Wacker Chemie AG, Adolf Würth GmbH & Co. KG, Yardstick Robotics GmbH, Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung IPA, Fraunhofer-Institut für Materialfluss und Logistik IML, Dürr Systems AG, Rheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH, SAFELOG GmbH, Siemens AG
