Keynotes

The transition to Industry 5.0 demands adaptive, human-centric industrial robots capable of executing contact-intensive tasks in highly variable environments. Moving beyond rigid trajectory programming, this keynote lecture presents a unified framework for intelligent robotic manufacturing developed at the University of Alberta’s ADaMS Laboratory. By integrating multi-modal sensor fusion, closed-loop feedback, and real-time digital twinning, this framework enables safe, adaptive, and certified production systems.

The talk shares insights in three core technological pillars:

Human-in-the-Loop Surrogates: Digitizing manual operations using sensorized work gloves and depth cameras to capture human force-motion dynamics. These datasets train force-aware imitation models that dictate robot contact forces via active impedance control.

Active 2D/3D Perception: Utilizing 3D machine vision scanners for real-time point-cloud mapping, semantic segmentation, and feature tracking. This vision-in-the-loop capability is demonstrated through various industrial examples.

Hybrid Manufacturing: Scaling symbiotic principles to large-scale additive-subtractive systems, featuring Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing (WAAM) of bimetallic joints, metal-ceramic composites, and continuous carbon-fiber printing. Geometric and material integrity are maintained via in-situ thermal monitoring and robotic post-deposition grinding.

The talk concludes with a visionary pathway for digital quality certification, introducing the digital twinning framework to manage regulatory and compliance data across the product lifecycle, establishing a robust foundation for autonomous manufacturing.