SMME,
University of Surrey,
Guildford, Surrey,
GU2 7XH, UK

Tel (01483) 879681
Fax (01483) 306039

The Robotics Lab at the University of Surrey ...

The Mechatronic Systems and Robotics Research Group have been based in the University of Surrey Robotics Lab (room 2 AB 18) on the University campus since 1989. The lab houses all research facilities, including industrial and laboratory robotic workcells, a Bosch conveyor system, and a laser metrology area, in addition to the research group office facilities.

Robot Systems

The group has three industrial robot arm systems (2 6 DOF Unimation Puma's and an Adept Systems Scara device), three Zymark laboratory testing robots (donated to the group by Esso UK) and a customised RWI mobile vehicle. One of the PUMA controllers has been by-passed using a custom built open architecture robot controller which allows for interfacing to various external sensor systems, including the original University of Surrey stereo head system. The latest incarnation of the stereo head is a very compact, fast device which may be mounted on the RWI system and controlled by an operator wearing a virtual reality headset equipped with a three degree of freedom Polhemus tracking sensor.

Flexible Workcell

A recent development in the facilties that are available for research and teaching is the MSRR-Bosch flexible manufacturing workcell. This features over 40 feet of conveyor and incorporates two industrial robots, vision systems and other sensors. Also available is a 3 axis continuous path controlled Deckel CNC machine, which may be programmed from the Department's CAD suite.

Measurement and Inspection Devices

These include a digital triangulation measurement system for large volumes and two laser interferometry systems.

Brushing Technology

Extensive laboratory facilities exist for evaluating the performance of sweeping brushes and vehicles. Brush speed, axial torque and wear can all be recovered automatically with test equipment operating in a LABVIEW environment. Facilities also exist for testing the performance of a variety of sensors mounted to a moving vehicle.

Specialist Computing Hardware

The applied industrial nature of the group's work demands that real time systems and facilities must be used. Specialist architectures used include transputer networks (including a 32-T800 array), several Datacube pipeline video image processing systems, and embedded i860 devices.

Multi-purpose Computing Facilities

The research group has an extensive network of standard computing resources including Sun Microsystems and Silicon Graphics workstations, PCs, Macintoshes, and real time and/or embedded systems running OS-9, QNX and LynxOS. These run a wide variety of specialist commercial and in-house developed packages for image processing, neural networks, virtual environment and robot simulations, CAD modelling and robot control. Commercial software currently in use includes AUTOCAD, IGRIP (by DENEB), GRASP (by BYG), NeuralWorks PRO, MATLAB, World Toolkit and LABVIEW. There is a research support facility for manufacturing systems research which includes 12 workstations, a CNC machining centre and a range of software development and modelling tools.

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These pages are administered by Maarten Michielen (m.michielen@surrey.ac.uk)
Please read this copyright and disclaimer notice.
Last change: April 2000


		SMME, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK	Tel (01483) 879681 Fax (01483) 306039