Prensilia is part of the APRIL project. The APRIL project (multipurpose robotics for mAniPulation of defoRmable materIaLs in manufacturing processes) is a research project funded under the Horizon 2020 EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and coordinated by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain).
APRIL will develop a new generation of robots to innovate the ways of handling flexible and deformable materials for manufacturing in European enterprises. It aims at prototyping low cost and agile market oriented multipurpose, and easy to repurpose, autonomous dexterous robots; which will manipulate, assemble or process different soft and flexible products/materials in a production line environment. This will enable new ways of automatization (semi- or fully-automatic tasks) in manufacturing lines that produce, assemble or handle different types of flexible or deformable materials (e.g., from pillows to delicate food products). Multi-sensor feedback will be used for robot interaction with their contextual environment, robot manipulation, motion planning, ergonomic enabled human work and safe performance. To underpin robots’ low set-up costs, reduced development effort and faster and scalable deployments, APRIL will transfer learning of many perceptive abilities and skills through easy robot training or repurposing in manufacturing processes at cross-domain level (e.g. food, appliances or passports manufacturing).
