PRODRIVE

During my placement at Prodrive I was tasked with procuring a robot to help aid the production processes at Prodrive. Unfortunately this placement was cut short due to COVID - 19. However during my short time at Prodrive I researched several avenues to try and procure a robot. Research consisted of looking at which areas of Prodrive’s production could be automated or aided by the use of robotics.

During the research stage a number of applications were explored. This lead onto writing a report about how SME’s (small to medium sized enterprises) could integrate collaborative robots into their product assembly. Collaborative robots allow for much faster and easier programming which makes them ideal for production lines which are ever changing.

To demonstrate how robotics could potential be implemented and to see how a collaborative robotic arm would be programmed a prototype was built. The robotic arm was constructed out of cardboard and used four small 180 degree motors. The robotic arm was programmed using Arduino. The robot arm was able to pick up an object and move to another area.