KEYNOTE TALKS
We are glad to include in our program the keynote speeches.
See all details below.
KEYNOTE 1: Current possibilities and future challenges to support the design process by simulation using the example of rolling bearing applications
Speaker: Oliver Graf-Goller
Oliver Graf-Goller is the director of the R&D Analysis Methods Fundamentals department at Schaeffler Technologies AG & Co. KG since 2019. He earned a Diploma (FH) in Mechanical Engineering with focus on automtive engineering in March 1995 and started his journey in Schaeffler one month later. Since then, he worked as a project manager for various technical topics, such as rolling bearings in internal combustion engines and turbo chargers, but also managerial, like global benchmarking and holistic variant management. His interests in recent years particularly focus on bearings-related innovative technologies and solutions.
Engineering competence is a key success factor in mechanical engineering. Therefore, advanced simulation tools are an indispensable part of the product development process. The constantly increasing demands on design quality, e.g., efficiency and accuracy for assessing the CO2 footprint, but also the need to consider additional effects, such as electric properties of gears and bearings, or consideration of interdependencies of mechanical components in a drivetrain, require a good balance between model accuracy and acceptable computational effort in the product development process. Next to having advanced simulation capabilities, it is also crucial to provide such tools in a user-friendly way to enable efficient support of the design process, especially for application engineers who have no expert knowledge in a specific area.
As an example, a complete toolchain for electric simulation has been integrated into a program originally developed for the simulation of rolling bearings in mechanical drivetrains. Such integration of additional domain knowledge into existing tools allows the democratization of knowledge, thus enabling application engineers to perform tasks originally only accessible to a limited number of experts. This leads to better design quality and especially also to shorter lead times.
KEYNOTE 2: Past, Current and Future Research Topics in Robotics at IGMR, RWTH Aachen University
Speaker: Burkhard Corves
Burkhard Corves is university professor and director of the Institute of Mechanism Theory, Machine Dynamics and Robotics of RWTH Aachen University since 2000. He earned a Ph.D. Degree „magna cum laude“ at RWTH Aachen University in 1989 with a dissertation on „ Simulation of the kinematic and dynamic behaviour of manipulators with partially closed kinematic chains “. Since then, he worked at RWTH Aachen University with the teaching assignment on the topic of “Kinematics and dynamics of spatial mechanisms, robots and manipulators”. In 2010, he was nominated adjunct professor at Beijing Jiaotong University and, in 2019, he did a period as visiting professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. His research experience led to more than 500 publications containing books, journal and conference papers covering different topics such as industrial and mobile robotics, linkages, cam mechanism, glass machinery, pneumatic mechanisms, computer-aided graphical analysis and synthesis in mechanism theory, mechatronic development and machine design strategy.
The institute of Mechanism Theory, Machine Dynamics and Robotics (IGMR) is an established chair at RWTH Aachen University with many national and international partners in research and industry. Ever since, the focus of research has been the development and optimization of mechanisms of any kind.
Already in the eighties of last century IGM, the predecessor of IGMR, was involved in a robotics research alliance of RWTH Aachen University dedicated to robotics. In the early 2000 the robotic scope was enlarged towards parallel kinematic machines especially in industrial applications. In 2018, the institute’s name was visibly augmented by robotics, which has been an already well-established research group within the institute for many years. In the early years, the robotics group has focused on classical stationary industrial robots only, while maintaining the link to mechanism development. In the last years, novel fields of application have given rise to mobile robotics at IGMR including path planning, navigation and slam. Certain research projects are funded by either the European Union or the German Universities Excellence Initiative, in addition to industrial funding. The presentation will not only shed a light on past robotic contributions, but will also focus on current research and give an outlook towards the future.