For the goal of Eng. Mehmed Medev is to master the Ladder programming language. Engineer Mehmed Medev – master's degree in the specialty "Industrial Engineering" at the Technical University – Plovdiv branch – is convinced: the robot must not harm humans. This belief has been developed by Eng. Medev throughout his entire thesis "Safety Cage for Working with Robots". It was important for him to make the safety cage applicable to all robots in the world. The idea came to him at the university in the city of Brno, Czech Republic, where in 2023 he studied for several months under the "Erasmus" program. There he trained in the university laboratory. And at the Technical University – Plovdiv branch, he took a step forward. Instead of the microcomputers used in the Czech Republic to control the robot, here he applies a logical controller /RLC/.
Engineer Medev explains: "Actually, the robot 'listens' to a special system, which is controlled by a programmable logic controller (PLC). It has been introduced into the industry as a standard. It is the programmable logic controller that determines when the robot will work and when it will stop. And I program this logic controller."
My job was to select the components that would be the "eyes" and "ears" of this system. The goal is that when a person approaches the robot, the system sees and hears them, and it tells the robot: there is a person nearby – stop, slow down.
And precisely she completely cuts off the power supply to stop or give the command "wait" through a pause. This is how the interaction between the industrial robot and the human is actually established, so as to create a safe working environment.
The scholar also says that in order to teach robots to understand humans, he first had to learn a special programming language called Ladder. Because the robot does not speak every language. Engineer Medev was so "passionate" about his work that he began to dream of solutions to certain scientific problems, then got up, wrote them down, and in the morning went to the university to test them.
How can a robot distinguish a person from a fly that has entered its workspace? Mehmed Medev has provided an answer to this question in his thesis. In the industry, light curtains are used, and lidars are also employed to detect objects approaching the robot. The laser eyes of the lidar tell the robot the distance of the person from it. If the person is at a safe distance, the robot will operate at 100 percent. But someone must eventually service this robot, so just as we can start it, we must also be able to stop it.
We are building intelligent systems that allow the robot to adapt to people, rather than people adapting to the robot
explains Eng. Medev. And he clarifies: "I am not the first to work in this direction. Generally speaking, until now, we have isolated the robot in a cage, and to enter that cage, you first have to press a button, and if the robot allows it – you will go to it. This interrupts its program. Then another technician has to come to restart the robot. My contribution is that I unlock the robot's cage, do what I came for, leave, and the robot continues to work without needing someone else to come and restart it."
The scientific supervisor of the graduate student is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Radoslav Hrischev, to whom the young engineer is very grateful for the support during difficult moments, for the guidance in the development, and for the fact that they together pondered the complex questions of robotics. And there were difficulties. "To prepare my thesis, I needed about 4 months. The most difficult part was to create the architecture within the program so that data exchange would be complete. Connecting everything was the hardest part. Not mechanically tying cables, but setting parameters in the software product and establishing connections between everything so that it works flawlessly. I have not yet decided what career I want to start, but I want to continue working with robots." – concluded Eng. Mehmed Medev.
My job was to select the components that would be the "eyes" and "ears" of this system. The goal is that when a person approaches the robot, the system sees and hears them, and it tells the robot: there is a person nearby – stop, slow down.
And precisely she completely cuts off the power supply to stop or give the command "wait" through a pause. This is how the interaction between the industrial robot and the human is actually established, so as to create a safe working environment.
The scholar also says that in order to teach robots to understand humans, he first had to learn a special programming language called Ladder. Because the robot does not speak every language. Engineer Medev was so "passionate" about his work that he began to dream of solutions to certain scientific problems, then got up, wrote them down, and in the morning went to the university to test them.
How can a robot distinguish a person from a fly that has entered its workspace? Mehmed Medev has provided an answer to this question in his thesis. In the industry, light curtains are used, and lidars are also employed to detect objects approaching the robot. The laser eyes of the lidar tell the robot the distance of the person from it. If the person is at a safe distance, the robot will operate at 100 percent. But someone must eventually service this robot, so just as we can start it, we must also be able to stop it.
We are building intelligent systems that allow the robot to adapt to people, rather than people adapting to the robot
explains Eng. Medev. And he clarifies: "I am not the first to work in this direction. Generally speaking, until now, we have isolated the robot in a cage, and to enter that cage, you first have to press a button, and if the robot allows it – you will go to it. This interrupts its program. Then another technician has to come to restart the robot. My contribution is that I unlock the robot's cage, do what I came for, leave, and the robot continues to work without needing someone else to come and restart it."
The scientific supervisor of the graduate student is Assoc. Prof. Dr. Radoslav Hrischev, to whom the young engineer is very grateful for the support during difficult moments, for the guidance in the development, and for the fact that they together pondered the complex questions of robotics. And there were difficulties. "To prepare my thesis, I needed about 4 months. The most difficult part was to create the architecture within the program so that data exchange would be complete. Connecting everything was the hardest part. Not mechanically tying cables, but setting parameters in the software product and establishing connections between everything so that it works flawlessly. I have not yet decided what career I want to start, but I want to continue working with robots." – concluded Eng. Mehmed Medev.
