A Reconfigurable Multirobot Cooperation Workcell for Personalized Manufacturing

Most robotic systems designed for mass manufacturing are optimized for a specific type of product. They generally lack the ability to adapt to low-volume customized products. In this article, we present a system based on a modular design for manufacturing personalized medical stent graft implants. The concept is based on learning-by-demonstration by integrating real-time 3-D vision, multirobot collaboration, and personalization to guide the robots to learn and execute tasks continuously with adaptation to different implant geometry. The system is optimized to generate customized and collision-free paths for efficient object manipulation and task completion. We show that the system is generalizable to different stent graft designs and the proposed multirobot system can seamlessly work together with high efficiency without collisions. The results have also suggested its usability for other manipulation tasks, especially for flexible production of customized products where bimanual or multirobot cooperation is required.

Automated summary

This article introduces a robotic system for manufacturing personalized medical stent graft implants based on a modular design, which utilizes real-time 3D vision, multirobot collaboration, and personalization to guide robots to adapt to different implant geometry. The system can efficiently generate collision-free paths and is generalizable to different stent graft designs.