Member of the Winning Team at the UK-RAS Manufacturing Robotics Challenge 2019

Participants of different disciplines were put into teams to tackle a challenge based real-world manufacturing problems. It consisted of developing a robotic system using the KUKA Iiwa collaborative robot to pass an operator tools based on verbal commands and simultaneously providing visual feedback of the robot's intention to allow safe collaboration.

It involved developing solutions for each of the areas below and finally integrating the solutions through ROS to form a complete functional system:

- Human interface: interpretation of verbal commands using natural language processing

- Machine vision: identify objects and generate grasp strategies using machine vision

- Robot control: planning of robot motion to reach, grasp and transport objects while avoiding collision

- Digital twin interface: visualisation of the real robot using augmented reality

Cuebong’s team is the winning team to come up with a reliable robotic system able to interpret verbal commands from the operator and passing requested tools from known locations to the operator through a sequence of planned motion and grasping actions. They showcased the achievements for each of the sub-challenges individually and their ability to develop a flexible and robust integrated system. They were also able to demonstrate working components for the machine vision and digital twin interface sub-challenges. His primary roles throughout the challenge included developing the robot control program and integrating it seamlessly with the human interface components.

As a result he has been invited to attend the UK-RAS International Robotics Showcase 2019 event held in London, which includes an awards ceremony for this robotics challenge.