The future is now
If you take a look at Corporate Research at KUKA, you will see that the future is slowly becoming the present. This department is where employees work every day on the technologies of tomorrow. Here, components are quickly printed by a 3D printer, robots communicate with each other and learn from each other while performing their tasks. This way they become smarter with every action they carry out. They can also be intuitively operated with a smartphone. In supermarkets, shelves are no longer just filled by humans alone. And if it was up to Corporate Research, robots would do more than just do household chores for the elderly. The areas in which colleagues research and develop are wide-ranging.
Let’s take a closer look at three KUKA Corporate Research projects:
Reliable breast cancer diagnostics
The EU research project MURAB, “MRI and Ultrasound Robotic Assisted Biopsy”, is committed to developing better cancer diagnostics. The goal is to increase the precision and effectiveness of biopsies with the help of an LBR iiwa. An MRI is followed by an ultrasound scan using the LBR iiwa. The “Tissue Active Slam (TAS)” tissue modeling technology developed as part of the project will collate both data sets in one model and identify nodes.


Innovation in the supermarket
Awkward and time-consuming retail tasks are still not supported by automation. The staff of the EU-funded research project REFILLS, “Robotics Enabling Fully-Integrated Logistics Lines for Supermarkets”, wants to change that. “This raises the question: Why are there no robots in today’s supermarkets?” asks Klaus Miller, the
project leader.

A dating platform for service robotics
The potential for service robots is signifi cant, but market developments have not met expectations. “Service robotics is a special line of business. In this sector, solutions are developed for medium quantities and usually at very high costs. Service robotics is more of a product business than a project business,” explains Dr. Uwe Zimmermann.
