Paderborn revives Kawasaki six-axis robot with custom control interface for AI teaching
University of Paderborn's Karl project refurbished a Kawasaki six-axis robot and a Franka Emika Panda, adding sensors and a custom external control interface.
The University of Paderborn's Karl project has returned two idle industrial robots to service for teaching: a six-axis Kawasaki and a seven-axis Franka Emika Panda. Staff and students at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute fitted new sensors and folded both machines into simulation and control environments.
For the Kawasaki, the team first studied its control in simulation, then built its own interface so external software could drive the arm. That let participants plan motion sequences, send them to the real robot and evaluate the results. The university says the refurbished systems are ready for lectures and practical courses; the source does not establish performance figures or availability beyond that.
The Panda served as the testbed for reinforcement learning. One experiment replaced the sample-based Rapidly-exploring Random Tree planner; another used Soft-Actor-Critic to tilt a plate and roll a ball toward its center, with a camera tracking the ball. A separate student project combined an existing robot with department sensors to pick objects from one moving turntable and place them on a second.
For shops, the takeaway is the control route: an older arm can be re-driven from external software rather than replaced.