POSTED: 08 Dec, 2023

Massive congratulations to our PhD researcher, Barış Balcı who completed his final seminar today!

His thesis is entitled: Methods for Robotic Surface Finishing. His supervisory team include Professor Jonathan Roberts, Associate Professor Jared Donovan and Distinguished Professor Peter Corke and the review panel included Dr Christopher Lehnert, Dr Fangyi Zhang and Associate Professor Mats Isaksson.

His project addresses the challenges of using industrial robots in the surface finishing processes of custom-manufactured goods. Unlike mass manufacturing, in which goods are produced in high volumes with relatively non-changing manufacturing processes, custom manufacturing needs to overcome frequent process changes to deliver different products. These changes create multiple challenges such as cell design and reprogramming for implementing robotics into custom manufacturing scenarios.

Surface finishing for custom-manufactured products currently relies on high-skilled human operators to achieve the required level of position and force accuracy for the desired outcome. The project has created prototype tools for easing the integration of industrial robots into custom surface finishing operations while combining the knowledge of the human operator and the physical capabilities of the industrial robots.

As part of his thesis, Baris will have three papers published. The first two are below with a third to come in the new year:

* B. Balci, J. Donovan, J. Roberts, and P. Corke, “Optimal Workpiece Placement Based on Robot Reach, Manipulability and Joint Torques,” 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA). IEEE, May 29, 2023.

* B. Balci, J. Roberts, J. Donovan, and P. Corke, “Force Controlled Robotic Surface Finishing with Variable Tool Centre Point (TCP),” 2023 IEEE International Conference on Automation Science and Engineering (CASE). Accepted, May 25, 2023.

Barış originally started his PhD as part of the Innovative Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC) Design Robotics project with UAP | Urban Art Projects and ARM Hub (Advanced Robotics for Manufacturing). He had to pause his PhD for 2 years during the pandemic. When he returned, we were lucky enough to have him join our Centre.