Distributed Control Concept for a 6-DOF Reconfigurable Robot Arm
Authors: Dr. Thomas Strasser, Dr. Martijn Rooker, Gerhard Ebenhofer
Abstract
Current trends such as shorter product lifecycles, reduced time-to-market and mass-customization require new paradigms and approaches for production lines and machines. In the long term, production and manufacturing com-panies will only be able to survive in the face of increasing globalisation if they can react flexibly and quickly to changing customer and market demands. New paradigms and approaches are waiting to fulfil these requirements, but their implementation requires completely new technologies.
Reconfiguration, both at machine (physical) and control technology (logical) level is a promising candidate to achieve the flexibility required by these paradigms by technical means. This makes a shift from centrally controlled, highly interlinked, and often tightly interlocked production systems to distributed, modular, collaborative components essential. This paper describes the distributed control concept for a 6-DOF reconfigurable robot arm as a demonstra-tion platform for reconfigurable approaches at PROFACTOR.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| PROFACTOR_RobotController.wmv | 7.68 MB |
| PROFACTOR_RobotController.pdf | 2.18 MB |
Dear authors,
The introduction of the 6-DOF Reconfigurable Robot Arm is purposely for manufacturing and assembly tasks in the erra reduced model life cycle and increased product variety hich has induced more rapid changes.
I have two questions;
1. To which type of industries that the robot could be used effectively?
2. What are the limitations of the robot?
;)
zuhriah
Dear Zuhriah,
Currently we are using the reconfigurable 6-DOF robot only for demonstration and development purposes in our laboratory. But from the vendor of the PowerCubes (i.e. the German company Schunk - www.schunk.de) we know that their goal is to establish the modular concept of the robot for the domain of service robots. In addition we see also a big potential in the industrial domain (like the manufacturing domain). In the PiSA FP6 Integrated Project we are working on modulare, reusable and reconfigurable approaches for the manufacturing domain, mainly for assembly applications.
What du you main exactly by the "limitations of the robot"?
Best regards
Thomas
Hi...Thomas
thanks for your answers...
It would mainly apply to the assembly sector.
In my 2nd question...what I means is the limitations in terms of the range of each axis...
I think it is quiet important to know the maximum HxLxD dimensions of the parts/product to be assembled using this robot especially in the case of high variety product.
;)
ZE
Dear Zuhriah,
The PowerCubes from Schunk company can be order in three different sizes. The vary from 70 mm border size to 110 mm border size. Therefore the configuration of a robot based on the PowerCubes can be very different. In our laboratory configuration the first two axis are PR-110, which means boarder size of 110 mm. Axis three and four are from type PR-90 and the last two axis from type PR-70. Furthermore connector elements have to be used in order to connect the PowerCubes. Some details about the different PowerCube types are reported in the paper.
For details you should directly look to the Schunk homepage at http://www.schunk.de.
Best regards
Thomas
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