At USC’s Center for Advanced Manufacturing, I had the opportunity to automate the composite layup process with the use of robotic manipulators. A current manual process, the precision of composite creation through the use of robotics still needs advances to be used on a wide scale for part creation. To optimize the robotic cell for composite layups, I wrote robot language for a KUKA iiwa 7-Degree of Freedom manipulator for trajectory testing, tool velocity-drape quality, force, joint torque, and position error data collection, implementing impedance-controlled compliant movements for the optimum layup of pre-preg carbon fiber.
Tool path planning integration included:
• Developing an application to integrate the use of a mesh-dependent geodesic (shortest path on a surface) path planning method to improve trajectory accuracy along the surface of complex molds. Application created using Visual Studio and C++.
• Optimizing a MATLAB GUI planner, a user-friendly Human-Machine Interface (HMI) for an operator to generate geodesic paths for the robotic layup of composites.