Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2018-03-10
Buyer: Aarhus Universitet
Country: DK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 38000000
Estimated value: 125000 DKK
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: The Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University, will be investing in a collaborative robot (cobot) for rapid sample changes after thorough testing and programming at the instrument HEIMDAL at the European SpallationSource (ESS), Lund, Sweden.
It is essential that the robot can be controlled by the external control system implemented at ESS/HEIMDAL.
The Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University, will be investing in a collaborative robot (cobot) for rapid sample changes after thorough testing and programming at the instrument HEIMDAL at the European SpallationSource (ESS), Lund, Sweden. The robots will grab the samples from a sample tray, pass it by a barcode scanner for identification, and the place sample on the goniometer, where computer vision will be used for the final alignment. After the experiment the sample will be returned to the sample tray and the process repeated with the next sample in line. The weight of the sample, including its container amounts to a few grams to a few tens of grams. The precision on positioning of the robot should be better than 0,1 mm.The endpoints — i.e. pickup of samples from the sample tray and placement on the goniometer needs to be hard coded as these are persistent and does not change. The movement between the two points needs to be changed often (daily) so it is imperative that the robot has an intuitive learning mode — preferably one where the operator physically moves the robot along the new trajectory.
It is essential that the robot can be controlled by the external control system implemented at ESS/HEIMDAL.
The robot will be placed on and near delicate equipment and thus it is important that it is collaborative to avoid damages to personel or other equipment. It is also envisioned that the robot may be placed on a translation stage and thus the weight should be low, preferably under 20 kgs.
Based on the above description, and the derived requirements to the robot, the solution is a collaborative robot (cobot) which includes: collaborative / security, coding, etc. via desk research (internet) is investigated which current solutions are available. Currently there are much discussion and mainly claims regarding cobots, but the fact is that only very few solutions on the market are useful in reality. Many alleged cobots are too small or not developed with the necessary equipment, as well as encoding does not meet the flexible and operational needs, as specified in section. 1, including the need for the operator to implement intuitive coding in the form ofc concrete physical movement. The wrong choice of cobot will thus eliminate the entire value of the project.
Based on the above description, and the derived requirements to the robot, the solution is a collaborative robot(cobot) which includes: collaborative / security, coding, etc. via desk research (internet) is investigated which current solutions are available. Currently there are much discussion and mainly claims regarding cobots, but the fact is that only very few solutions on the market are useful in reality. Many alleged cobots are too small or not developed with the necessary equipment, as well as encoding does not meet the flexible and operational needs, as specified in Section. 1, including the need for the operator to implement intuitive coding in the form of concrete physical movement. The wrong choice of cobot will thus eliminate the entire value of the project.


Winner: Bila A/S
Award value: 125000
Number of bids: 1