Since 1995, the Valencian engineering company Nutai has focused its activity in the automotive sector on mechatronics, industrial automation, and machine vision. Now, as its general director Enrique Vacas explains, “we are once again showing Valencian and Spanish society that local companies also generate innovative projects with the potential to reach major global manufacturers.” The most recent example is their collaborative robots, which enable interaction between emerging technology and operators.
Many of them installed at major OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers), these robots are characterized by providing companies with the ability to optimize line productivity. The main goal of the project lies in adapting and integrating each robot into the workstation and the production line. “The rapid progress in robotics will allow the combination of these robots with autonomous vehicles to become more common, where they can be programmed to follow a route and supply products to production lines,” says Mónica Pérez, senior engineer at Nutai.
Among the advantages of these robots is their ability to plan alternative routes in the presence of obstacles and with different material supports, from shelves to cabinets or pallets. “They transport parts and tools to the assembly lines, where operators or robots assemble them,” Pérez explains. To manage the traffic of autonomous intelligent vehicles in the plant, navigation software is installed — “a traffic control center,” Pérez details, “which programs and tracks the movements of each vehicle according to the production needs of the lines, avoiding collisions between them and with any obstacles or people.”
THE 1ST INNOVATION FAIR, NEXT STOP
Nutai, a member of AVIA, will present on June 7th its developments for integrating collaborative robots with machine vision into production lines and their communication with so-called autonomous intelligent vehicles. The company will be one of more than 50 participants in the 1st Innovation Fair, organized by the Automotive Cluster of the Valencian Community, which aims to highlight the innovations developed by companies in the region and break the stereotype that it is only a manufacturing area.
