Large semi-structured manufacturing spaces present serious challenges for robot mobility, safety and reliability. This is clearly the case of shipbuilding environments. Shipyards exhibit unique features that challenge but also make of major interest the deployment of mobile robots able to take on arduous repetitive tasks in which productivity may not be improved but at the expense of worker wages.
The problems at hand in CARLoS project are the fit-out operations inside blocks of ship superstructures. Currently, these tasks require arduous manual works. There is no available solution to automate the targeted works in a complex environment such as shipbuilding.
The final goal of the CARLoS project is to get a prototype of a robot co-worker for fit-out operations inside blocks of ship superstructures. The specific operations targeted by CARLoS are stud welding and marking based on information from a CAD model that are necessary for posterior fit-out operations.

Contact:  Germano Veiga