The FELICE project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 101017151, addresses one of the most critical challenges in artificial intelligence applied to robotics: coordinated and seamless interaction between humans and robots in industrial settings. The project aims to develop next-generation assembly processes to effectively meet the pressing demands of today’s production lines. To achieve this, the project focuses on creating adaptive workspaces and a cognitive robot that collaborates with workers on production lines.

FELICE is grounded in multidisciplinary research activities spanning collaborative robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision, IoT, data analysis, cyber-physical systems, process optimization, and ergonomics. Its goal is to provide a modular platform that integrates and harmonizes various autonomous and cognitive technologies to enhance the agility and productivity of manual assembly systems, while ensuring safety and improving the physical and mental well-being of factory workers.

In the FELICE project, the collaborative production line relies on three fundamental technologies:

• A mobile robot that moves along the production line, assisting workers in collaborative assembly operations through voice commands and gestures.
• Adaptive workstations capable of dynamically adjusting (e.g., via voice commands) to workers' needs in terms of height, tilt, and lighting, and providing multimodal informational guidance and notifications on assembly tasks.
• A global digital twin that monitors the state of the production line and represents it through a digital replica accessible to operators across the entire production line.

Objectives

• Develop context awareness through multi-sensor perception algorithms: Process and fuse real-time data collected from various sensors to represent operators and objects in the assembly chain. This includes mapping the production line, analyzing operator behavior and ergonomics, detecting and localizing objects of interest, and recognizing verbal commands issued by operators.
• Enhance fluidity and ergonomics in human-robot collaborative assembly: Fluidity refers to the level of coordination between robot and human actions during a collaborative activity. For effective collaborative assembly, robots perform tasks simultaneously or even jointly with humans, improving both the physical and cognitive ergonomics of the assembly process to benefit operators.
• Orchestrate the assembly process in real-time: Monitor the assembly line as a whole to make dynamic corrective decisions about the assembly process operation and the selective use of robots to improve production line performance, supported by the digital twin.

Partners

The consortium consists of a balanced mix of academic and research organizations (FHOOE, FORTH, ICCS, IFADO, IML, PRO, TUD, UNISA), one of Europe’s largest automotive manufacturers (CRF), three highly successful SMEs with significant expertise in engineering and IT (ACCREA, AEGIS, CAL-TEK), and a legal consultancy service provider (EUNOMIA).

• Institute Of Communication & Computer Systems (ICCS)
• University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria (FHOOE)
• Foundation for Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH)
• Centro Ricerche FIAT (CRF)
• Forschungsgesellschaft Fur Arbeitsphysiologie und Arbeitsschutz Ev (IFADO)
• AEGIS IT Research UG (AEGIS)
• CAL-TEK Ltd
• Technical University Darmstadt – Institute of Ergonomics & Human Factors (TUD)
• University of Salerno (UNISA)
• Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML)
• ACC ACCREA
• PROFACTOR GmbH (PRO)
• Eunomia LIMITED

Additional Information