May 7

The schedule for Day 5 included solely the company visit to KUKA and lunch at the University of Augsburg cafeteria, which meant we were able to sleep in. This day was important for me though because my project group is assigned to KUKA. The beginning of our visit was a short slideshow presentation and our group was able to ask the lady some questions in order to help with our project. Then, we took a tour around the large production facilities in the KUKA plant. We got to see how the parts of the robots are made, which was cool because they are made by other KUKA robots. We also received a tour of the testing area. We got to see all the different tests the robots are put through in order to make sure that they are in good, working condition before they are sent out. I was impressed by the fact that KUKA claims .01mm repeatability for their robots. After our tour, we got to walk around to different stations where KUKA engineers showed and explained to us some of the things that the robots are capable of. I was most impressed by the technology used to make human-robot interaction safer. It had sensors that move with the robot so that if something comes within a certain distance of the robot, it will stop working. The end of our visit included another short presentation with a question and answer portion. After the visit, my project group and I got together for dinner and began working on the project.