Vulcanexus supports ROBIN in bringing intuitive robotic tool delivery to smart manufacturing

Within the European ARISE project, ROBIN demonstrates how Vulcanexus and eProsima middleware technologies can support real industrial Human-Robot Interaction, helping mobile robots assist workers safely, naturally, and efficiently on the factory floor.

 ARISE is a European initiative focused on making industrial Human-Robot Interaction more accessible, cost-effective, and trustworthy for sectors such as healthcare, intra-logistics, and manufacturing. Through its FSTP experiments, different projects are developing practical use cases that explore how open middleware, reusable robotics components, and human-centric design can accelerate the adoption of advanced automation in Europe.

One of these projects is ROBIN: Robotics-AI-Human Interface for Welding and AM, a project focused on human-centric monitoring, quality control, and AI-assisted optimisation for robotic welding and additive manufacturing environments.

What is ROBIN about?

ROBIN addresses one of the key challenges in advanced manufacturing: enabling operators to supervise complex robotic welding and additive manufacturing processes with reliable live information, clear alerts, and AI-supported recommendations, without removing the human from the decision-making loop. 

Led by 3D-Components AS, with Mechatronics Innovation Lab AS as validation partner, the project focuses on connecting an industrial robotic welding cell to a software stack able to collect, contextualise, analyse, and visualise process data. Its demonstrator combines a UR10e robotic GMAW welding cell, a Fronius TPS320i welding source, a WAGO PLC, a Garmo Garline profilometer, ROS 2-based control and sensing, FIWARE/NGSI-LD context management, and a React operator dashboard. 

In this type of environment, reliable communication is essential. Robot motion, welding parameters, PLC signals, profilometer measurements, deviation alerts, AI predictions, and operator decisions must remain synchronised so that the operator can understand what is happening, decide how to react, and keep responsibility for the final action.

How Vulcanexus fits into ROBIN

ROBIN uses Vulcanexus Jazzy and ROS 2 as the robotic communication backbone, providing a DDS- native foundation for live data exchange between the robotic cell, sensing components, control nodes, and middleware services. This helps the project move from simulation-oriented connectivity toward a more standardised, modular, and reusable architecture based on real industrial telemetry. 

Through the eProsima DDS Enabler, the /robin/telemetry topic can be ingested directly into Orion-LD as NGSI-LD entities. This makes welding and robot information available for real-time analytics, dashboard visualisation, alerting, AI-assisted recommendations, and historical monitoring through FIWARE, Mintaka, and TimescaleDB.

What eProsima technologies provide

Beyond Vulcanexus, ROBIN uses the eProsima DDS Enabler and Fast DDS/DDS communication to connect the ROS 2 domain with FIWARE while avoiding custom bridge code for telemetry ingestion. A DDS mapping configuration defines how ROS 2 data is represented as NGSI-LD entities and attributes. In the containerised deployment, a dedicated Vulcanexus-based integration container supports this connection by running the required ROS 2/DDS middleware components and enabling selected telemetry to flow from the robotic cell to FIWARE.

For the ROBIN architecture, this means cleaner data exchange between the robotic welding cell, the Process Intelligence API, the monitoring dashboard, and the industrial context-management layer. It also supports a reusable ROS 2-to-FIWARE integration pattern that can be adapted beyond welding to additive manufacturing, spray coating, or other robotised processes with measurable telemetry.

A real use case for intelligent tool delivery

The ROBIN demonstrator has been validated in a production-like laboratory robotic welding cell at Mechatronics Innovation Lab in Grimstad, Norway. The system connects live hardware to the ROBIN stack, streams telemetry from the robot, welding source, PLC, and profilometer, contextualises process data in FIWARE Orion-LD, stores process history, and detects bead-geometry deviations against AI- predicted or operator-defined targets. 

The demonstrator reached TRL 6, showing an operator-supervised workflow from telemetry acquisition to deviation handling, intervention, logging, and post-run analysis. Its evaluation includes live visualisation of five welding-related parameters, dashboard monitoring at up to 10 Hz, lower-level welding data available at 100 Hz for synchronisation and analysis, AI model benchmarks, deviation detection, CSV history export, and a usability score of about 75%.

Supporting the future of collaborative manufacturing

ROBIN is a strong example of how open middleware and industrial robotics technologies can contribute to safer, more flexible, and more sustainable manufacturing. By combining AI-supported process intelligence with Vulcanexus-based communication and FIWARE, the project creates a foundation for robotic welding systems that can better explain process behaviour, detect deviations, and provide clear information to human operators. 

For eProsima, ROBIN showcases how Vulcanexus and DDS-based technologies can support real industrial robotics deployments, helping bridge the gap between robot-side control and enterprise-level monitoring systems. 

For the ARISE ecosystem and the companies behind ROBIN, the project demonstrates how reusable, interoperable, and human-centric robotics components can accelerate the adoption of automation in manufacturing, not by replacing skilled operators, but by giving them better data, clearer alerts, and more trustworthy tools for supervising high-precision robotic processes.