[SIGGRAPH 2020] RoboCut: Hot-wire Cutting with Robot-controlled Flexible Rods

Подписаться 784

Просмотров 171 тыс.

50% 1

Accompanying video for the SIGGRAPH 2020 technical paper
"RoboCut: Hot-wire Cutting with Robot-controlled Flexible Rods"
by Simon Duenser, Roi Poranne, Bernhard Thomaszewski, and Stelian Coros.
ACM Transactions on Graphics 39, 4, Article 98 (July 2020).
Link to paper: n.ethz.ch/~sduenser/content/p...
Computational Robotics Lab: crl.ethz.ch/
Simon Duenser:
n.ethz.ch/~sduenser/
Roi Poranne:
inf.ethz.ch/personal/poranner/
/ roiification
/ roiporanne
Bernhard Thomaszewski:
www-labs.iro.umontreal.ca/~ber...
Stelian Coros:
crl.ethz.ch/coros.html
Abstract:
Hot-wire cutting is a subtractive fabrication technique used to carve foam and similar materials. Conventional machines rely on straight wires and are thus limited to creating piecewise ruled surfaces. In this work, we propose a method that exploits a dual-arm robot setup to actively control the shape of a flexible, heated rod as it cuts through the material. While this setting offers great freedom of shape, using it effectively requires concurrent reasoning about three tightly coupled sub-problems: 1) modeling the way in which the shape of the rod and the surface it sweeps are governed by the robot’s motions; 2) approximating a target shape through a sequence of surfaces swept by the equilibrium shape of an elastic rod; and 3) generating collisionfree motion trajectories that lead the robot to create desired sweeps with the deformable tool. We present a computational framework for robotic hot wire cutting that addresses all three sub-problems in a unified manner. We evaluate our approach on a set of simulated results and physical artefacts generated with our robotic fabrication system.

Наука

Опубликовано:

11 май 2020

Ссылка:

Скачать:

Готовим ссылку...

Добавить в:

Мой плейлист

Посмотреть позже

Комментарии : 272

@jmalmsten 4 года назад

Researcher: We built a robot that can use a wire to cut shapes out of foam. Me: sounds reasonable enough. R: and it can have a slack in the wire and with physics-simulation predict its path through the block to get large smooth curved areas. M: That is witchcraft, and heretic sorcery to boot! R: Unfortunately we couldn't figure out how to spin the block so we have an assistant do that. M: I can see why a spinning turntable could be an engineering nightmare.

@juancarlosgzrz 4 года назад

hahaha

@helmut666kohl 4 года назад

Maybe ABB just charges 10 grand for that extra axis control? :-P

@gormauslander 4 года назад

I just commented this before reading it 😂

@poione42 4 года назад

Damn it! why are spinning tables so hard to create?

@Vit-Pokorny 4 года назад

cuz it has to be super durable to handle the weigh-.... oh wait

@TheVergile 4 года назад

i might be willing to donate my old vinyl player to the cause in case the assistant turning the worktable wants to take a day off

@fzigunov 4 года назад

You know the assistant turning the table is the same person doing everything else, right?

@BME-dj1ox 2 года назад

As a mechanical engineering student, I never anticipated that I'll find a SIGGRAPH paper so interesting!!! Now I'm binge watching all SIGGRAPH presentations on youtube lol. Somehow I got this vid recommended (pro'lly cuz I watch some robotics stuff at times) and I'm very glad.

@JesseCombsTwiZtedCheese 4 года назад

this could prove very useful in a situation where a simple shape needs to be cut to safely hold something when shipping it. sure beats making a mold and casting it.

@dave5194 4 года назад

Genius

@alphaprot2518 4 года назад

What it doesn't beat (neither by time nor probably in terms of cost) are those foam bags which perferctly fit the shape of the goods once steam gets blown into them. The foam-base material inside them expands through the hot, humid air (while being kept in place by plastic bag around it) - and voila. Time needed for that ~3 Minutes.

@Kakantor 4 года назад

Not every robot ought to have a practical application, they can also be a showcase of engineering feats, like the precision of the mechanism and the ingenuity of the software.

@grendelum 4 года назад

the ultimate dnd terrain bot

@ShaunakDe 4 года назад

Thanks for releasing this video publically. Very informative and inspiring.

@bebe7C9 4 года назад

I miss the Dr. Károly Zsolnai-Fehér introductory. :(

@nicholasfinch4087 4 года назад

What a time to be alive

@gawni1612 4 года назад

Hold on to your papers.

@helper_bot 4 года назад

2 papers down the line

@columbus8myhw 4 года назад

Pronounced Karoy Zholnai-Feheir

@theshuman100 3 года назад

cant believe 2 minute papers died

@nicksonyap 4 года назад

I could smell the styrofoam fume from here

@TheVictorotciV 4 года назад

I don't know how useful is this in real life, but it's amazing!

@index7787 4 года назад

All of the math, literally all of it

@pherja 3 года назад

Index And yet such horrible English. Why?

@jTempVids 4 года назад

WoW. Truly Amazing.

@4.0.4 4 года назад

The turntable isn't hard, but what about removing the excess material? Then again, a sufficiently powerful fan could help :D

@MrCrackbear 4 года назад

exactly, the turntable isn't hard, so you don't even bother with that and you put it in the final draft of the design. they were mainly focusing on getting the cutter itself to work and getting the turntable working is a less important and easier problem that has already been solved before, so as long as it's not crucial to the design they might as well just turn it with their bare hands and save some extra time getting the turntable working.

@roiification 4 года назад

You actually don't need to remove excess material right away. The wire would cut through anyway. It's done in the video for the viewers' sake only.

@teknastyk 4 года назад

@@roiification If you have an option to attach a air hose somewhere on the hand, that should be enough for foam like materials like this.. Otherwise not much needed unless you are cutting details.

@fuckgogle8688 4 года назад

They allready have robot arms, why not use them for that too

@Ninth_Penumbra 4 года назад

Or another arm with a suction tip.

@MarinusMakesStuff 4 года назад

Mind ---> blown. Wow. I'm working on a 2-axis machine that can cut foam in 2D, but this just rocks the boat.

@TheRainHarvester 4 года назад

Cool. Any idea how the rotation was synced to the cutting motion? How does the robot know the angle?

@L3nny666 3 года назад

working in an architecture office, i can say, this is game changing

@augurelite 4 года назад

this is INCREDIBLE

@ameteuraspirant 4 года назад

what a time to be alive

@lorenzvo5284 4 года назад

I can image this being very nice for automotive exterior prototyping

@andrewf8366 4 года назад

It might be, but 3d printing already exists and I'm not sure it fills that particular niche better. I wonder if it could be wired up the same way as an EDM and make extremely precise metal 3d parts.

@TheSunriseAnimation 4 года назад

@@andrewf8366 Seems as if it is much faster than 3D printing something at this scale.

@NightVisionOfficial 4 года назад

Or, minis playground :P, for dungeon or similar

@lorenzvo5284 4 года назад

@@TheSunriseAnimation That is what i was thinking about aswell. Im not knowledgable in the field but maybe for aerodynamic models aswell

@oscarolander7455 4 года назад

ruff cutting before the blank going to the cnc-router

@evrik78 4 года назад

Congratulations on your idea! Great job!!!

@3dpprofessor 4 года назад

I like the aesthetic it generates.

@WhataLoadofBull 4 года назад

Great job guys!

@user-qb2de4gn3g 4 года назад

Assuming hot wire can deal with high density foam, this process can be very beneficial for things like automotive prototypes. Custom car hulls are AFAIK often sculpted from foam and then covered with fiberglass for rigidity. This process looks absolutely amazing!

@afourtrackmind 4 года назад

🤯😍😍😍😍😍 This is incredible. Thank you for sharing.

@cemarslankurt 4 года назад

Amazing work.

@KiteTurbine 4 года назад

Incredible work!

@u1zha 4 года назад

Nicely done!

@untrust2033 4 года назад

And yet I can't even manage to keep a hot wire tight for more than a minute

@somedude2492 4 года назад

Metals expand when they heat up, try tightening it up a bit more to compensate

@davidbradt6202 4 года назад

Absolutely amazing

@doughntworry 4 года назад

Incredible. Super awesome !

@MikeSpille 4 года назад

Wow! Very impressive.

@thefantasticdrill788 4 года назад

Absolutely fascinating. I don’t know why this was recommended to me, but this is quite cool. “We will watch your career with great interest” Subscriber earned.

@fzigunov 4 года назад

This is quite amazing indeed!!

@capnthepeafarmer 4 года назад

Very cool! Keep up the good work!

@NicksStuff 4 года назад

This is incredible

@cortster12 4 года назад

Ahhh! I thought this was animated until the humans arrived in frame and threw off my perception of reality.

@neldanie 4 года назад

Phenomenal!

@Andertheil 4 года назад

The infinite molds this could produce! so many parts - so many ideas! 8D

@simontilstedhansen9296 4 года назад

Really nice idea and project😁

@xaytana 4 года назад

I really hope we'll get to see an open-sourced variant of the software in the future, assuming the affordability of robotic arms is more feasible in the future. A 3D hotwire bot would be a cool thing to have, especially when certain shapes are outside the scope of 3D printing and CNC machining on that scale is out of the affordability range for any hobbyist.

@kristopiir3107 4 года назад

Really nice!

@arashsahami5096 4 года назад

Amazing!

@almondhete3623 4 года назад

This is freakin awesome!

@guatagel2454 4 года назад

Amazing. Thank you!

@C0SMIKtv 4 года назад

That's really awesome

@aqiiiiiiiil 4 года назад

Great work.

@tantumDicoQuodCogito 4 года назад

WOW great job of engineering

@OpreanMircea 4 года назад

this method is so powerful, it opens up so many possibilities, like using a flexible saw to carve soft materials like wood or soft metals perhaps, to reduce the time it takes to make large industrial parts, or help automate the process of making low number very large parts, I don't know what I'm talking about but I see the possibilities

@deox4225 4 года назад

I don't see this being useful for wood or metals. It would require the line to stiffen and be a straight line. Which would limit the possible geometries and require much more effort than tradicional CNCs (Not to mention that the back-and-forth motion of a saw would make this project a entirely new challenge). I can see this being potentially useful for lost foam casting processes. Although it probably can't handle holes and concave details very well. Actually... the more I think about it the less I see it being used in practice for any type of manufacturing... But it is a marvelous idea and can very well be used in many future applications that haven't been discovery yet. Researches like this is what makes technology evolve in such giant leaps.

@OpreanMircea 4 года назад

@@deox4225 you are right, this technology per se may not be as useful, but something inspired by this, or the next one after that may be more amazing

@Hellefleur 4 года назад

First thing I thought: Large chess pieces! Too bad it doesn't rotate.

@AlanMelling 4 года назад

Super cool work! And it addresses a real need

@nagualdesign 4 года назад

😂 Good one.

@npc6817 4 года назад

shut up, we do need it. I took a class in arts academia where they teach about integrating new technologies into sculpture and do you have any idea how damn long it takes a conventional cnc arm to carve a block that size or larger? a whole day if you're lucky, I would've killed to get one of those in the lab. to be fair the arm we have also carves marble at the same speed, but who the hell can afford marble when foam is so cheap and convenient

@AlanMelling 4 года назад

@@npc6817 I does address a real need. I literally said as much. Think about large scale architectural forms, many are made of foam. This can be a useful way to prototype, and maybe even to manufacture those custom pieces.

@npc6817 4 года назад

@@AlanMelling sorry, I thougt it was sarcasm. I mean, that's what we used the carving robot for, we made those large foam prototypes since it was impossible to build them in marble, but even when we used pre-shaped blocks to ease the work on the robot it'd still take ages, this one could've easily done it in half the time

@AlanMelling 4 года назад

@@npc6817 no worries! That sounds like fun work! Seeing your ideas made manifest in reality is fulfilling.

@jakubpiotrmusia9340 4 года назад

Regregards from Poland Mr Tomaszewski!

@drbelli 4 года назад

this is veeeery interesting

@captivenut4122 4 года назад

This is so exciting! Amazing work!

@mikeglass5735 4 года назад

Very cool

@gabedarrett1301 4 года назад

I find it interesting that despite the advanced technology, the traditional method of making a coarse "rough draft" followed by finer details is still used. The same applies to expert artists and scooters

@johannnespaul4300 3 года назад

this is BEAUTIFUL ,, imagine if the robotic hands could manipulate where they grip the wire for further settings , or even , "change" tools xD they could be like michael angelo

@shub250 4 года назад

Very interesting

@twitte0king 4 года назад

awesome!

@RazgrizDuTTA 4 года назад

I would love to have that to make composite sandwich structures :o ! The path prediction is impressive!

@ABDLLHSDDQI 4 года назад

Just finished my Bachelor's and had decided to switch my field from robotics/mechatronics towards computer science and do more of the AI/ML stuff related to robotics rather than pursue the mechanics. This video and related research projects just validate my motivation even more. Thank you for this. Maybe it's a coincidence but my Bachelor's thesis also involved trying to replicate an ETHZ paper for a different robot.

@bigreemus3795 4 года назад

I don't know why this was in my recommended, however this is really neat! Just a question from a guy on the outside looking in, what stops you from attaching a motor to a lazy susan/ or whatever works best for holding the material so you don't have to physically align the substrate. Just seems like it would be more accurate as well as not as tedious. You could even have it "stop and wait" for you to remove the excess material. The math behind this is amazing.

@simonduenser5446 4 года назад

Glad you liked in anyway! Regarding automatic rotation of the material (this question seems to pop up quite frequently): You are of course right, for practical purposes the workpiece should absolutely be mounted onto an automatic turntable - or even a third robotic arm. However, so far this has been a pure research project, and focused on the computational challenges. Since adding more hardware didn't promise any profound new insights, we chose to go for the cheapest and quickest option.

@Sukrim 4 года назад

Seems that option is "an ETH student". :-D Would be interesting how to scale this approach down a bit (e.g. for less mobile applications, these robot arms look expensive!) and also take into account the actual physical properties of a heated rod (melting foam away slowly over time if it stays stationary).

@YostPeter 4 года назад

@@simonduenser5446 "We chose to go for the cheapest and quickest option" Spoken like a true engineer.

@Teth47 4 года назад

@@Sukrim Could probably put the workpiece on an XYa (left/right, forward/back/perpendicular rotational axis) table, fix one end of the wire axially to another XYa table and the other to an XY table. Accomplishes the same effect albeit with less resolution for way less money using parts with good economy of scale because of the 3D printer and home CNC markets. Might even be able to use an off the shelf CNC controller if the software used here outputs g-code or something convertible to it. Really cool stuff.

@gerrychen 4 года назад

@@Teth47 Clever idea! But the robot arms look like 6dof arms; with 2 of them plus a turn table you need 13 degrees of freedom, whereas each XYa table only gives you 3. Not to say that it couldn't be done with more consumer-level electronics, but it would be a real challenge at a minimum. Avoiding collisions could also be challenging, since it looks like the arms frequently move around above 3 sides of the cube rather than just one side (so you need to be able to reach around the workpiece) awesome work by the way!

@sebbes333 4 года назад

Imagine what the robot can do if it could also control the foam's rotation (in 3D) while it is cutting :o

@hydraulicsystems332 4 года назад

Not much more, it already has 6 DoF with the wire.

@nickpiovesan4361 4 года назад

Interesting implications for quick-scale mockups. People have been talking about 3d printing for years, yet I could imagine this tech could be applied to cut out several different shapes in the time it takes for one 3d print! Different scales of detail to be sure.

@mahrezjanati3426 4 года назад

This is the next 3d printing

@IgorSantarek 4 года назад

Adding one or two additional hands to rotate the table would be a great idea to remove cut parts. It would add also a great amount of futurism to tye design. Two arms cut, one or two holds the table and rotates it. Everything is moving.

@volvo245 4 года назад

Getting horrible future visions of bald business suit wearing industrial robots rolling around with superheated garrotes, lobbing human heads off in a blink of an eye with incredible precision.

@MontanaDoe 4 года назад

Have you considered using this for fiber glass form making? I'd imagine you could do some fairly large scale automotive paneling or boat hulls from 3d models instead of clay carvings they do now

@MadHatter123456 4 года назад

Great work! How long does the toolpath computation take? And does the user have any control over the process or is it all automated? Loving it!

@JesseCombsTwiZtedCheese 4 года назад

cool

@juaninci 4 года назад

Lovelyyy

@BrokenLifeCycle 4 года назад

This would be very useful for the production of lost-foam casting for one-off projects. As in, if you don't plan to produce more than one or two of anything, then this would be ideal.

@markgearing 4 года назад

Twelve degrees of freedom, plus one intern, to achieve three axis machining. Well done, academics. Well done.

@Scrogan 4 года назад

That’s pretty incredible! I assume the slow speed is chosen such that the cutting forces are insufficient to deform the wire, because I’ve seen hot wire cutters move much faster than that. Calculating the static curve of the wire looks like an interesting analytical problem, but adding dynamically changing cutting force to it would likely make it a computational problem, and not necessarily a fun one. Adapting the rough cutting path to the form of the solid is a problem I’d have no clue how to even attempt, good job with getting good results out of that!

@jamesbern8540 4 года назад

🔥🙏

@427060 4 года назад

So sick. I'd love to have this to make fiberglass negatives for carbon layup without machining insulation foam and making a huge mess. Cut foam > fiberglass > Prepreg

@mahdialkaifi6691 4 года назад

This would be really interesting to create hard-to-make curved formwork for concrete or plaster molds. With some kind of interior coating, i think itd be interesting to make reusable molds.

@phugoid7 4 года назад

Wowww Flexible body simulation !

@Ninth_Penumbra 4 года назад

I'm wondering if there's a similar effect for working on polystyrene foam using hot air & a bunch of differently sized nozzles. I'm a sculptor and have shaped the stuff many times using just a hot air gun & a small butane torch (& metal calipers for measurements). Note that the object isn't to bring the heat source into contact with the foam, but to bring it just close enough as to cause the material to soften & collapse in on itself. I've made several portrait heads in clay using fairly anatomically accurate human skull forms made of polystyrene as part of the internal support & armature.

@suit1337 4 года назад

truly amazing, but what's the deal with rotating the platform manually?

@wahabfiles6260 4 года назад

wow

@TheRainHarvester 4 года назад

Cool. Any idea how the rotation was synced to the cutting motion? How does the robot know the angle?

@spacenomad5484 4 года назад

My guess is that they put together a series of cuts manually in the simulation, exported the arm movements from that and re-played it. So the angles were already known, possibly set arbitrarily by a human.

@Ubya_ 4 года назад

i think the best piece is the last one, i'm sure this robot excels in doing curves that are already in the piece to be cut. while the rabbit and other animal forms are cool, they are really rough, they could be a first step before going under a cnc router and get a better finish

@spacenomad5484 4 года назад

Impressive! Do you account for flex in the wire caused by heat and the material to be cut in the physics sim?

@diegofernandezg 4 года назад

Have you thought of trying to make hollow pieces? where the wire is bended to a curve and rotated inside, making a vase type sculpture?

@paulsky54 4 года назад

Very interesting. Some questions. How is the object checked for accuracy. If or when the cutting wire is replaced does this require recalibration.

@kevin-bf4ww 4 года назад

hey simon good work i had a very similar idea once in a dream but didn't have the resources or wherewithal

@oO0Xenos0Oo 4 года назад

Having a turning table would also allow even more Shapes. Imagine the Workpiece turning with differing speeds and directions, while the wire is cutting. You might be able to cut out stuff like double helixes.

@aa55claa55cl 4 года назад

to be honest, What I can see is the future in tumor resection in optimizing area of resection ( like Glioblastoma Multiforme ). Many of the time, the tumor is difficult to resect due to margin involving functional area, and the margin is difficult to judge . In radiotherpay of cancer, gradient field optiziation is used currently. but curvature optizimation may still be a difficult topic in the RadioTherapy treatement

@herantd 4 года назад

Very cool, this could be automated even more by adding rotating table and something to remove excess foam

@Acheiropoietos 4 года назад

Robot: then the humans started playing with the cutoffs and not the model. Typical.

@DanaTheLateBloomingFruitLoop 4 года назад

This is amazing! Are there any other materials that could be sculpted in this way?

@ryannadler2617 4 года назад

I can't really think of anything else that cleanly separates and doesn't want to immediately fuse back. It would have to be a good insulator to prevent that. Even clay that's wire cut for initial blocks wouldn't really work.

@Steve-uu7yx 4 года назад

*the cnc mills are evolving*

@sebbes333 4 года назад

The robot could do 2 cuts per turning, one on the near side & another on the far side (assuming the cutting direction has no impact on the cutting result?). ( eg. when milling it can be important to cut in the correct direction, because it removes material differently depending on material movement relative to the tool rotation )

@brag0001 4 года назад

An example of this is actually shown in the video

@dariodalcin5177 3 года назад

How do you predict the way the wire is going to bend? The temperature is not going to be constant, because the part of the wire which is doing the cutting loses more heat, so the mechanical properties change along the wire. Furthermore you have to consider the force applied by the foam on the wire. I would be curious to know how you approached such a complex problem

@Clark-Mills 4 года назад

Very good. Always suspicious when a shot is cut (end of sphere cut shot at 3:40 ). Great work regardless, thanks!

@janos71 4 года назад

I was thinking the same thing

@MrCrackbear 4 года назад

it wasn't cut dude, it was finished, do you expect it to cut under the sphere and sever it from the support?

@kevinvermeer9011 4 года назад

Why did you use the double-actuator ABB instead of a pair of robots with a common controller? I've used Fanuc, Denso, and Epson units that have a slave/master controller system to do stuff that appears superficially similar (hand-offs, crash avoidance, team lifts) and they can definitely achieve the endpoint precision required, but I'd be curious if that ABB 2-in-1 has tighter coordination while in motion.

@djblast101 4 года назад

Wonder compared to a CNC router which is more flexible?

@Dev1nci 4 года назад

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

@rock3tcatU233 4 года назад

This is very impressive, but what would the practical advantages of this method be? Compared to regular CNC foam cutting.

@AlexanderBukh 4 года назад

speed, curves and surface smootheness?

@TiagoTiagoT 4 года назад

Was it just for the challenge or is there a reason why this approach would be preferable over just using a single arm and a pointy hot-end to carve it in a more detailed manner?