Project based at
Lead Partner Organisation
Cobotic-assisted exploration into soldering and inspection of wire barbs for stent graft manufacture
Project Start date:
22nd August 2022
End date:
7th April 2023
What’s this project about?
This was an exploratory project that aimed to provide insights on how cobotic systems could assist with the process of soldering and inspecting barbs attached to wires during the manufacturing of stent grafts.
The process included the iterative design of a robotic jig that assisted with placement and fixture to support soldering and related processes (such as flux application and cutting), as well as an exploratory study into vision-based inspection and soldering of barb joints.
The project team studied the current workflow of stent graft manufacturing and, in conjunction with the prototyping, focused on human-robot interaction tasks, including the placement of wires, human adjustments, and handover routines.
Their aim was to deliver a proof of concept to indicate the feasibility of integrating a cobotic system into the existing stent graft manufacturing process to explore effective production optimisation and human-robot workflows.
Expected Outcomes
The expected outcomes were:
- An understanding of the workflow of stent graft manufacturing, based on a contextual inquiry. This would aid the design and development of cobotic systems in this area of manufacturing.
- A proof of concept of a cobotic-assisted jig for the exploratory soldering and inspection of wire barbs.
- An evaluation report on effectiveness, applicability, and integration with human-robot interaction routines.
- Documentation of compliance and QA needs for future process implementations.
Project Team
Project Team Centre CI’s:
Markus Rittenbruch, QUT
Jared Donovan, QUT
Anjali Tumkur Jaiprakash, QUT
Postdoctoral Research Fellow:
Stine S. Johansen, QUT
REF team:
Dasun Gunasinghe, REF team, QUT
Steve Martin, REF team, QUT
James Mount, REF team, QUT
Andy Keir, REF team, QUT
Other associated researchers:
Yu Kao, QUT
Partner Investigators:
Gareth Keen, Cook Medical
Rashaad Lambat, Cook Medical
Joshua Griffin, Cook Medical