Xaba Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp. recently completed a project to evaluate the automation of crucial manufacturing operations using the aerospace company’s industrial robots integrated with Xaba’s xCognition, which the company describes as a “proprietary physics-informed deep artificial neural network model.”
Xaba and Lockheed Martin identified a use case focused on a typical robotics work cell used in aerospace factories to test xCognition’s effect on commercial robot intelligence.
The test consisted of two phases:
Xaba reports in a press release that xCognition improved accuracy and consistency of the commercial robot by a factor of 10x. The test shows how industrial robotics augmented with xCognition can perform crucial manufacturing operations that until now have been exclusively done by more expensive and less flexible CNC machines, according to the company.
“The accuracy performance of a robotic system limits the type of process it can perform based on the cost efficiency of the accuracy hardware,” says Matthew Galla, applications engineer staff for Lockheed Martin’s Aeronautics business. “The test with the xCognition controller allows us to rethink how we can accelerate innovation in manufacturing.”
Accurate drilling is historically performed by skilled operators and requires static machine tools.
Using industrial and collaborative robots (cobots) instead is a much more flexible, adaptable, and less costly option than CNC machine tools, says Xaba. However, commercial industrial robotics systems have struggled to perform critical manufacturing operations such as drilling, laser welding, light machining and precise assembly.
“Our xCognition A.I.-driven control system opens a new world of application opportunities for industrial robots and cobots,” say Massimiliano Moruzzi, CEO of Xaba. “It positions Xaba at the center of intelligent automation for sustainable manufacturing.”
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