Cobot software systems are today difficult and time-consuming to program, with programming costs being a significant portion of total cost, and cobot GUIs are challenging to use for unskilled operators. Cobot and auxiliary hardware bundling with OEM proprietary software limits how the robots can be configured, decreasing owner flexibility and increasing integration costs. These are major barriers to the uptake of cobot technology by SME manufacturers that RiACT seeks to break down with the generic RiFLEX platform.

In this project we want to develop and demonstrate a software development kit, RiFLEX Developer, to complement RiACT’s existing RiFLEX Runtime generic operating system for collaborative robots. As well as to adapt and augment RiFLEX Runtime with 6D vision capability and functions needed to integrate RiFLEX Developer and RiFLEX Runtime into a consolidated platform. We aim to radically innovate the state-of-the-art cobot operating system and its implementation with a series of novel technical approaches.