The RoX project aims to provide German industry with its own AI infrastructure for robotic systems across multiple sectors. A cloud-based ecosystem will enhance efficiency in manufacturing and development while ensuring greater independence and data sovereignty compared to international competitors. To achieve these goals, several use cases have been identified for collaborative development. The kick-off event at Dürr's headquarters in Bietigheim-Bissingen, brought together around 100 representatives from leading companies in the automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical, and aerospace industries, as well as industry associations and research institutions.
Focus on practical applications
The RoX project emphasizes practical applications to address key industry challenges. At the kick-off event, consortium members introduced sub-projects, formed working groups, and outlined initial work packages with timelines. Dürr is leading a use case to develop an AI tool over the next 30 months, assisting developers throughout the entire process from assembly to commissioning of robot cells. Drawing on decades of global project experience, Dürr is collaborating with its partners to advance AI expertise in robot-based painting automation through simulation models.
The benefit: AI should support developers
When configuring a robot cell, developers must make critical decisions early in the development process. “The number, space requirements, and motion sequences of the robots used, the resulting layout of the system, the assignment of tasks, possible painting programs, etc. – all of this has to be defined in order to ultimately achieve the customer's required cycle time,” explains Florian Jaensch, who is responsible for the RoX project at Dürr. Dürr’s working group is configuring an AI tool to assist developers with these decisions and take on other tasks independently during commissioning. For example, in the future, AI could optimize path programming autonomously, increasing efficiency. This level of automation aims to accelerate the robot cell configuration process overall.
Knowledge database of expert and process knowledge
The foundation for this initiative is a knowledge database that consolidates expert and process knowledge, enabling AI to utilize it effectively. By drawing on data and specifications from the knowledge database – including concepts from earlier projects – the AI can generate initial suggestions, such as suitable robot types or layouts, up to the fully configured robot cell with associated process parameters. This reflects a gradual shift in the distribution of roles and tasks between developers and their tools. In the future, developers in industrial manufacturing will primarily define requirements, which AI will then use to automatically generate solution proposals, similar to how large language models like ChatGPT operate today.
Addendum:
The RoX research project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection through DARP funds, based on a resolution of the German Bundestag. It is also financed by the European Union under NextGenerationEU. The views and opinions expressed in the text are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union or the European Commission. The European Union and the European Commission assume no responsibility for them.
About 8ra/IPCEI-CIS:
8ra is the key digital initiative for Europe driven by more than 100 companies and research organizations from 12 EU Member States aiming to establish the first-ever “Multi-Provider Cloud-Edge Continuum”. The main objective is the creation of an entirely new decentralized environment, which will enable software infrastructure for the advanced use of data processing resources from Cloud to Edge. This novel open ecosystem operated by multiple providers will reduce technological dependencies as well as lock-in effects. Moreover, it will enable a whole new dimension of data-driven business models, e.g., AI- and IoT-related, for a broad spectrum of domains and industries such as manufacturing, mobility, energy and tourism. During the course of the funded projects, a total volume of several billion Euros will be invested.
For further information please visit www.8ra.com.
