PROACT Concurrent engineering @LAAS Toulouse July 2019

Getting together in person still has an added value in today’s hyper connected business environment. The PROACT Consortium met for a concurrent engineering session at LAAS-CNRS in Toulouse in July for two days. The team reviewed both their software and hardware designs, and tackled open issues. A common understanding of the sub-system interfaces that will be used for PRO-ACT’s multi-robot systems was achieved during the meeting. The team was able to make solid progress with a whiteboard, open discussion and a mindset toward success.

The consortium has been working on their early designs since the System Requirements Review milestone in May 2019. They have produced elements for the preliminary system design milestone, and carried out prototyping activities.

The consortium must produce an interface that facilitates cooperative mission planning, collaborative manipulation, and software and hardware adaptation to the IBIS and Mantis robots. Among the challenges facing the PRO-ACT consortium, is the need to guarantee successful concurrent operation of these two robot’s sensors integrated within the INFUSE framework.

At this very critical meeting, the entire consortium split into working groups, where the wide scope of key topics could be covered in parallel. These groups then recombined to present their findings, so everyone was aware of the conclusions reached.

The consortium team at the EC.

This approach was fruitful with software and hardware sub-system development taking huge steps forwards. Partners professionalism, focus and drive were self-evident in the results achieved by this multinational, European consortium.

Since this meeting, partners have continued to mature the design of the sub-systems and prepare for the first stages of their physical development. These efforts will be presented to the PSA at the next preliminary design review being hosted by DFKI in Bremen on 8 November 2019.