News

CRC Association Awards for Excellence recognise DMTC automation technology project

DMTC’s project ‘Automation technology for armoured vehicle manufacture’ was shortlisted in the Awards for Excellence in Innovation at the Cooperative Research Centre Association (CRC Association) conference dinner in Melbourne on the 16th of May. The CRC Association Awards for Excellence in Innovation were initiated in 1999 to recognise outstanding examples of the transfer of CRC research results, knowledge and technologies that have been developed for a wide range of users of research, including the community, companies and government agencies.

Automated Offline Programming (AOLP) is an innovative new technique that can be used to program industrial robots. Developed through the DMTC with a collaborative partnership between Thales and University of Wollongong, the AOLP system generates weld paths in a fraction of time required using conventional programming methods. AOLP uses sophisticated robot motion planning algorithms to generate collision-free robot paths. This new technique has been applied to the robotic manufacturing cell at Thales Land Vehicles in Bendigo. The implementation of AOLP has significantly improved the capability of the robotic welding system resulting in substantial cost and time savings through the minimisation of manual welding and weld repair.

Congratulations to the Automated Offline Programming team for being shortlisted for this award, and congratulations to the winners of the award at Dairy Futures CRC, Future Farm Industries CRC and the Hearing CRC. To read more about the awards on the CRC Association website please click here.