Design and Testing of a Highly Reconfigurable Fixture With Lockable Robotic Arms

2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shengnan Lu ◽  
Zeshan Ahmad ◽  
Matteo Zoppi ◽  
Xilun Ding ◽  
Dimiter Zlatanov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Industrial Robot ◽  
End Effector ◽  
Revolute Joint ◽  
Robotic Arms ◽  
Supporting Structure ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Assembly Operations ◽  
Design And Testing ◽  
Reconfigurable Structure

The paper describes an innovative fixture created within the AUTORECON project of the European Commission's 7th Framework Program. The fixture is designed to respond to the automotive industry's needs of high modularity and full flexibility, by allowing the secure multishape grasping of a very wide range of (often large and heavy) metal workpieces typical for car-assembly operations. The fixture is used as an end-effector of an industrial robot, which in turn acts in cooperation with other machines, such as other robots performing machining or other processes on the part. The fixturing device is both a highly reconfigurable structure and a robotic mechanism: moving as a programmable robot to reconfigure and acting as a supporting structure once a hold on the part has been established. This dual functioning has been made possible by the development of a key component, a stepless lockable revolute joint, described herein. In order to get a readily modifiable system, all parts of the fixture are designed as modules. Prototypes of the main parts and the whole fixture have been fabricated and experiments validating the design are reported.

Design of spline surface vacuum gripper for pick and place robotic arms

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 48-55
Author(s):  
A. S. Jamaludin ◽  
M. N. M. Razali ◽  
N. Jasman ◽  
A. N. A. Ghafar ◽  
M. A. Hadi
Keyword(s):  
Cycle Time ◽  
Industrial Robot ◽  
Annealing Process ◽  
Vacuum Suction ◽  
Robotic Arms ◽  
Custom Made ◽  
Pick And Place ◽  
Manufacturing Procedure ◽  
Production Flexibility ◽  
The Impact

The gripper is the most important part in an industrial robot. It is related with the environment around the robot. Today, the industrial robot grippers have to be tuned and custom made for each application by engineers, by searching to get the desired repeatability and behaviour. Vacuum suction is one of the grippers in Watch Case Press Production (WCPP) and a mechanism to improve the efficiency of the manufacturing procedure. Pick and place are the important process for the annealing process. Thus, by implementing vacuum suction gripper, the process of pick and place can be improved. The purpose of vacuum gripper other than design vacuum suction mechanism is to compare the effectiveness of vacuum suction gripper with the conventional pick and place gripper. Vacuum suction gripper is a mechanism to transport part and which later sequencing, eliminating and reducing the activities required to complete the process. Throughout this study, the process pick and place became more effective, the impact on the production of annealing process is faster. The vacuum suction gripper can pick all part at the production which will lower the loss of the productivity. In conclusion, vacuum suction gripper reduces the cycle time about 20%. Vacuum suction gripper can help lower the cycle time of a machine and allow more frequent process in order to increase the production flexibility.

scholarly journals Recent developments in materials used for the removal of metal ions from acid mine drainage

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tebogo M. Mokgehle ◽  
Nikita T. Tavengwa
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Surface Water ◽  
Acid Mine Drainage ◽  
Metal Ions ◽  
Mine Drainage ◽  
Acid Mine ◽  
Adsorption Capacities ◽  
Ion Imprinted ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Ion Imprinted Polymers

AbstractAcid mine drainage is the reaction of surface water with sub-surface water located on sulfur bearing rocks, resulting in sulfuric acid. These highly acidic conditions result in leaching of non-biodegradeable heavy metals from rock which then accumulate in flora, posing a significant environmental hazard. Hence, reliable, cost effective remediation techniques are continuously sought after by researchers. A range of materials were examined as adsorbents in the extraction of heavy metal ions from acid mine drainage (AMD). However, these materials generally have moderate to poor adsorption capacities. To address this problem, researchers have recently turned to nano-sized materials to enhance the surface area of the adsorbent when in contact with the heavy metal solution. Lately, there have been developments in studying the surface chemistry of nano-engineered materials during adsorption, which involved alterations in the physical and chemical make-up of nanomaterials. The resultant surface engineered nanomaterials have been proven to show rapid adsorption rates and remarkable adsorption capacities for removal of a wide range of heavy metal contaminants in AMD compared to the unmodified nanomaterials. A brief overview of zeolites as adsorbents and the developent of nanosorbents to modernly applied magnetic sorbents and ion imprinted polymers will be discussed. This work provides researchers with thorough insight into the adsorption mechanism and performance of nanosorbents, and finds common ground between the past, present and future of these versatile materials.

scholarly journals A review on design and testing methodologies of modern freight train draft gear system

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Wagner ◽  
Colin Cole ◽  
Maksym Spiryagin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
South America ◽  
Former Soviet Union ◽  
Rolling Stock ◽  
Freight Train ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Draft Gear ◽  
Design And Testing ◽  
Damping Systems ◽  
The Eu

AbstractRolling stock connection systems are key to running longer and heavier trains as they provide both the connections of vehicles and the damping, providing the longitudinal suspension of the train. This paper focuses on the evolution of both connection and stiffness damping systems. Focus is on freight rolling stock, but passenger draw gears are also examined. It was found that connection systems have evolved from the buff and chain system used in the pioneer railways of the 1800s to the modern auto-coupler connection systems that are in-service worldwide today. Refined versions of the buff and chain coupling are, however, still in use in the EU, UK, South America and India. A wide range of auto-coupler systems are currently utilised, but the AAR coupler (Janney coupler) remains the most popular. A further variation that persists is the SA3 coupler (improved Wilson coupler) which is an alternative auto-coupler design used mainly throughout the former Soviet Union. Restricting the review to auto-coupler systems allowed the paper to focus on draft gears which revealed polymer, polymer-friction, steel spring-friction, hydraulic draft gears and sliding sill cushioning systems. Along with the single compressive draft gear units balanced and floating plate configurations are also presented. Typical draft gear acceptance standards are presented along with modelling that was included to aid in presentation of the functional characteristics of draft gears.

Complete Accessibility of Oscillations in Robotic Systems by Orthogonal Projections

1990 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabri Tosunoglu ◽  
Shyng-Her Lin ◽  
Delbert Tesar
Keyword(s):  
Current Practice ◽  
Industrial Robot ◽  
Robotic Systems ◽  
Orthogonal Projections ◽  
Small Oscillations ◽  
Robotic Arms ◽  
Driven System ◽  
System Equations ◽  
Six Degree Of Freedom

The current practice of controller development for flexible robotic systems generally focuses on one-link robotic arms and is valid for small oscillations. This work addresses the control of n-link, serial, spatial robotic systems modeled with m1 joint and m2 link flexibilities such that n≥m1+m2. System compliance is modeled by local springs and nonactuated prismatic and revolute type pseudo joints. The coupled, nonlinear, error-driven system equations are derived for the complete model without linearization or neglecting certain terms. For this system, the complete accessibility of vibrations is studied by orthogonal projections. It is shown that under some configurations of a robotic system, the induced oscillations may not be accessible to the controller. Given accessibility, the controller developed in this work assures the global asymptotic stability of the system. Example numerical simulations are presented based on the model of a six-degree-of-freedom Cincinnati Milacron T3-776 industrial robot. One example models the system compliance in four joints, while another case study simulates four lateral link oscillations. These examples show that this controller, even under inaccurate payload description, eliminates the oscillations while tracking desired trajectories.

Finding Features of Positioning Error for Large Industrial Robots Based on Convolutional Neural Network

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daiki Kato ◽  
Kenya Yoshitugu ◽  
Naoki Maeda ◽  
Toshiki Hirogaki ◽  
Eiichi Aoyama ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Convolutional Neural Network ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Industrial Robot ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Industrial Robots ◽  
Numerical Control ◽  
Robot Motion ◽  
Positioning Error ◽  
End Effector

Abstract Most industrial robots are taught using the teaching playback method; therefore, they are unsuitable for use in variable production systems. Although offline teaching methods have been developed, they have not been practiced because of the low accuracy of the position and posture of the end-effector. Therefore, many studies have attempted to calibrate the position and posture but have not reached a practical level, as such methods consider the joint angle when the robot is stationary rather than the features during robot motion. Currently, it is easy to obtain servo information under numerical control operations owing to the Internet of Things technologies. In this study, we propose a method for obtaining servo information during robot motion and converting it into images to find features using a convolutional neural network (CNN). Herein, a large industrial robot was used. The three-dimensional coordinates of the end-effector were obtained using a laser tracker. The positioning error of the robot was accurately learned by the CNN. We extracted the features of the points where the positioning error was extremely large. By extracting the features of the X-axis positioning error using the CNN, the joint 1 current is a feature. This indicates that the vibration current in joint 1 is a factor in the X-axis positioning error.

On-line multi-criteria based collision-free posture generation of redundant manipulator in constrained workspace

Robotica ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 625-636 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin-Liang Chen ◽  
Jing-Sin Liu ◽  
Wan-Chi Lee ◽  
Tzu-Chen Liang
Keyword(s):  
Null Space ◽  
Large Degree ◽  
Redundancy Resolution ◽  
Secondary Tasks ◽  
End Effector ◽  
Robotic Arms ◽  
Tracking Motion ◽  
On Line ◽  
Joint Limits ◽  
Joint Velocity

The manipulator with a large degree of redundancy is useful for realizing multiple tasks such as maneuvering the robotic arms in the constrained workspace, e.g. the task of maneuvering the end-effector of the manipulator along a pre-specified path into a window. This paper presents an on-line technique based on a posture generation rule to compute a null-space joint velocity vector in a singularity-robust redundancy resolution method. This rule suggests that the end of each link has to track an implicit trajectory that is indirectly resulted from the constraint imposed on tracking motion of the end-effector. A proper posture can be determined by sequentially optimizing an objective function integrating multiple criteria of the orientation of each link from the end-effector toward the base link as the secondary task for redundancy resolution, by assuming one end of the link is clamped. The criteria flexibly incorporate obstacle avoidance, joint limits, preference of posture in tracking, and connection of posture to realize a compromise between the primary and secondary tasks. Furthermore, computational demanding of the posture is reduced due to the sequential link-by-link computation feature. Simulations show the effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed method in generating proper postures for the collision avoidance and the joint limits as a singularity-robust null-space projection vector in maneuvering redundant robots within constrained workspaces.

Integrating Impedance Control and Learning Based Search Scheme for Robotic Assemblies Under Uncertainty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rishi K. Malhan ◽  
Yash Shahapurkar ◽  
Ariyan M. Kabir ◽  
Brual Shah ◽  
Satyandra K. Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Search Strategy ◽  
Small Volume ◽  
Impedance Control ◽  
Production Volume ◽  
Control Parameters ◽  
Robotic Arms ◽  
High Production Volume ◽  
High Production ◽  
Assembly Operations ◽  
Assembly Tasks

Using fixtures for assembly operations is a common practice in manufacturing processes with high production volume. For automated assembly cells using robotic arms, trajectories are programmed manually and robots follow the same path repeatedly. It is not economically feasible to build fixed fixtures for small volume productions as they require high accuracy and are part specific. Moreover, hand coding robot trajectories is a time consuming task. The uncertainties in part localization and inaccuracy in robot motions make it challenging to automate the task of assembling two parts with tight tolerances. Researchers in past have developed methods for automating the assembly task using contact-based search schemes and impedance control-based trajectory execution. Both of these approaches may lead to undesired collision with critical features on the parts. Our method guarantees safety for parts with delicate features during the assembly process. Our approach enables us to select optimum impedance control parameters and utilizes a learning-based search strategy to complete assembly tasks under uncertainties in bounded time. Our approach was tested on an assembly of two rectangular workpieces using KUKA IIWA 7 manipulator. The method we propose was able to successfully select the optimal control parameters. The learning-based search strategy successfully estimated the uncertainty in pose of parts and converged in few iterations.

A non-overconstrained variant of the Agile Eye with a special decoupled kinematics

Robotica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 889-905 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chin-Hsing Kuo ◽  
Jian S. Dai ◽  
Giovanni Legnani
Keyword(s):  
Angular Displacement ◽  
Universal Joint ◽  
Special Configuration ◽  
End Effector ◽  
Revolute Joint ◽  
Revolute Joints ◽  
Prismatic Joints ◽  
Decoupled Motion ◽  
Orientation Mechanism ◽  
Actuated Joints

SUMMARYA non-overconstrained three-DOF parallel orientation mechanism that is kinematically equivalent to the Agile Eye is presented in this paper. The output link (end-effector) of the mechanism is connected to the base by one spherical joint and by another three identical legs. Each leg comprises of, in turns from base, a revolute joint, a universal joint, and three prismatic joints. The three lower revolute joints are active joints, while all other joints are passive ones. Based on a special configuration, some three projective angles of the end-effector coordinates are fully decoupled with respect to the input actuated joints, that is, by actuating any revolute joint the end-effector rotates in such a way that the corresponding projective angle changes with the same angular displacement. The fully decoupled motion is analyzed geometrically and proved theoretically. Besides, the inverse and direct kinematics solutions of the mechanism are provided based on the geometric reasoning and theoretical proof.

Mechanical Design and Testing of a 2.5 MW sCO2 Compressor Loop

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan D. Cich ◽  
J. Jeffrey Moore ◽  
Chris Kulhanek ◽  
Meera Day Towler ◽  
Jason Mortzheim
Keyword(s):  
High Efficiency ◽  
Mechanical Design ◽  
Guide Vane ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Inlet Guide Vane ◽  
Inlet Temperature ◽  
Design Changes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Inlet Conditions ◽  
Design And Testing

Abstract An enabling technology for a successful deployment of the sCO2 close-loop recompression Brayton cycle is the development of a compressor that can maintain high efficiency for a wide range of inlet conditions due to large variation in properties of CO2 operating near its dome. One solution is to develop an internal actuated variable Inlet Guide Vane (IGV) system that can maintain high efficiency in the main and re-compressor with varying inlet temperature. A compressor for this system has recently been manufactured and tested at various operating conditions to determine its compression efficiency. This compressor was developed with funding from the US DOE Apollo program and industry partners. This paper will focus on the design and testing of the main compressor operating near the CO2 dome. It will look at design challenges that went into some of the decisions for rotor and case construction and how that can affect the mechanical and aerodynamic performance of the compressor. This paper will also go into results from testing at the various operating conditions and how the change in density of CO2 affected rotordynamics and overall performance of the machine. Results will be compared to expected performance and how design changes were implanted to properly counter challenges during testing.

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