More than 2.7 million robots are currently working in factories around the world &#; more than ever before, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR). Articulated-arm robots have the largest share among traditional industrial robots: Their movable robotic arms are reminiscent of the human arm; They can do a wide variety of jobs in a similarly versatile manner. Robotic arms effortlessly lift heavy components, help with production and assembly, or pack and palletize goods. The demand for the use of robotic arms is also increasing in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries: Here they are not only used in production, but also in the laboratory. Because they offer the advantage that systems can be quickly adapted to changing requirements. This enables companies to react flexibly to changes in demand and ever smaller batch sizes.
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This guide offers an overview of what is possible and useful with robots today, which criteria are decisive when buying and presents some bestsellers.
Thanks to constant technological development, the prices for robotic arms have fallen significantly in recent years. Multifunction robots are available for less than 1,000 euros. Small and medium-sized companies in particular benefit from this trend, because modern robotics now also allow them to automate even high-precision manufacturing tasks in a cost-efficient manner. At the same time, it is becoming ever easier to implement professional robotics and program robotic arms &#; today you don&#;t have to be a software expert to train a robot to do its job.
Robots are conquering more and more fields of application &#; from healthcare to agriculture. Robots even make a contribution to climate protection: In order to achieve the ambitious climate targets, renewable energies and environmental technologies are being produced on an unprecedented scale. According to the IFR, the components required for this can be produced efficiently even by small and medium-sized companies thanks to robotics and automation. These include fuel cells for hydrogen-powered cars, batteries for the transport sector and solar cells in the energy segment. In addition, modern robots work energy-efficiently and use them to directly reduce energy consumption in production. Thanks to their precision work, fewer rejects and defective goods are produced, which has a positive effect on the use of resources and output.
While the first robots were permanently installed and secured behind fences, they stubbornly performed their work, today they can also move freely as mobile robots. For this purpose, industrial robots are equipped with artificial intelligence, vision kits and other sensor systems. In the near future, they will act as mobile helpers to inform customers when shopping, deliver room service orders in hotels or support police tasks, for example by patrolling urban parks. Corresponding pilot projects can already be found around the world. There is also great demand for disinfection robots, logistics robots in factories and warehouses or robots for delivering goods to the front door.
At the same time, the integration of workplaces with human-robot collaboration is picking up speed. So-called cobots are increasingly working hand-in-hand with people, without any protective fences.
Service robots for personal and domestic use are produced for a mass market &#; the largest sales figures are domestic robots. These include vacuum cleaner and floor cleaning robots, lawn mowers and entertainment robots. In alone, more than 23 million service robots were sold worldwide for personal and domestic use, according to the IFR.
In the meantime, there are even inexpensive robot kits with which schoolchildren, students or trainees can gain their first experience with robotics. This means that the IT and STEM lessons leave the dry theory behind. Early childhood education can begin here with the help of screenless learning concepts from an entry age of four years. The degree of complexity can be increased fluently &#; up to highly complex robot systems that navigate and act autonomously in space using artificial intelligence and modern visual sensors.
Smart industrial robot arms for digital factory production technology and automated manufacturing process.The structure of the robot arms is based on the human arm. They have a high degree of mobility and flexibility &#; so they can be used in many applications, for example as palletizing, gripping, testing or welding robots in industry. They are available in different designs: The most important feature is the number of degrees of freedom, i.e. the axes of movement. Four to six axes are common. In order to achieve a greater range, robot arms can also be mounted on a linear axis. Seven-axis robots are most similar to the human arm: They are so agile that they can practically reach around corners.
Which robotic arm is the right one for the respective application depends on various factors. The first important criterion is the task that he is supposed to take on: is it about handling components, or should he pack products or paint components? Based on this basic function, the main functions of range, load and cycle time or speed as well as the degrees of freedom required to carry out the work can be defined.
To determine the required arm length of the robot arm, it is necessary to analyze the application on site and to take various criteria into account. These include questions such as:
The required movements that the robot arm must make with the component are then determined. For example, should it be tilted or rotated 180 degrees? It is also important whether the arm can move directly to the respective position or whether it has to reach around a component. The result of these considerations leads to the required number of axes.
When considering the load, it should be ensured that not only the weight of the component to be handled is taken into account, but also the weight of the required gripper. It is also important to analyze the position of the center of mass in relation to the attachment to the robot arm. If the center of gravity is relatively far away, it makes sense to choose a robot with a higher payload in order to enable a trouble-free and dynamic process.
Another step is to determine the required or desired cycle time. How fast should the robot be in completing its task? This is particularly relevant if the robot arm is to perform handling or processing steps in conjunction with a machine. Because then the processing time of the machine sets the framework within which the robot has to do its work.
Another important determinant is the positioning accuracy that the robot arm achieves. While it is not crucial for packaging tasks, for example, it has to be very high when the robot places components in machine tools.
When deciding to buy a robotic arm, attention should also be paid to setting up the system. Is there someone in your own company who has an affinity for programming machines? If not, a robot system should be selected that is taught the motion sequences &#;manually&#;: The robot arm is guided to the respective position by hand. The market also offers robots with intuitive software for applications that often involve changing tasks and small quantities. As a rule, you do not need specialists to put them into operation.
In addition, it must be considered which accessories are required or available. These include, among other things, grippers or camera systems. The safety equipment is also an important determinant &#; it depends on where the robotic arm is placed and how high the risk for people and machines is. The periphery within which a robot works and which together with it form the overall application is also important. The periphery specifies which communication interfaces the robot must have in order to exchange information with the other components and to what extent it can be integrated into a higher-level control system. The ROS framework (Robot Operating System) has established itself as an essential standard for overcoming different hardware interfaces. Most of the robots sold by reichelt that can be used in R&D or industrial automation are compatible with this and are therefore particularly easy and flexible to implement.
Depending on the application criteria, robot arms are available for a wide variety of applications:
With the TinkerKit Braccio, a fully functional robot arm is available for self-assembly. It is controlled via the Arduino computing platform and can therefore be easily modified. The kit is the right choice for getting started with robotics and for experimenting at home or at school. The TinkerKit can be assembled in different ways for different tasks. One possible application is that the robot arm optimally aligns a solar cell with the current position of the sun. Or you can use a smartphone attached to the arm to create a video in which the arm with the camera follows the position of a person.The uArm Swift Pro is a high quality robotic arm for different purposes. This four-axis robot was specially developed for vocational training. It enables an affordable entry into professional robot programming. Packages are already available for many open source platforms such as ROS. The robot arm combines a high position accuracy of up to 0.2 mm with fast positioning and low noise development. The uArm Swift Pro is thus a fully-fledged multifunctional robot for desktop applications, with which precise laser engravings can be carried out as well as pick-and-place tasks. With the corresponding kit available as an accessory, the robot arm can even perform 3D printing applications. An OpenMV Machine Vision Kit is also available as an option, which can be used to implement facial recognition, among other things.A further development of the uArm is the xArm , which with its excellent price-performance ratio is the right solution for small and medium-sized companies. It can be used, for example, to carry out pick-and-place tasks in the professional field. Due to the high flexibility and thanks to the many interfaces to third-party software, this robotic arm is a real alternative for many products available on the market. The xArm is available in three versions: As the xArm5 Lite with five rotary axes, it meets the requirements of simple applications in production. It also offers a payload of up to 3 kg with a range of up to 700 mm. With its six axes of rotation and a load capacity of 5 kg, the xArm6 enables free circular movement &#; ideal, for example, for machine operation, screwdriving, assembly or packaging and palletizing. If the robot arm is to move like a human, the xArm7 is the right choice: thanks to its seven axes of rotation, it can reach anywhere flexibly. It is suitable for complex tasks in research and development or in production, but can also be used in the catering industry as a bartender or barista.The six-axis industrial robot HORST900 is based on a new drive concept with its four-link chains. As a result, it is very powerful and has an optimal ratio of reach and payload: It can lift up to 5 kg with a repeat accuracy of +/- 0.05 mm and a range of over 900 mm. The robot arm produced in Germany enables simple and inexpensive automation of work such as loading, assembling, screwing, palletizing, measuring or contactless testing. With its intuitive operation and its uncomplicated connection to external machines, it can be integrated into industrial environments in a wide variety of sectors.In addition to the various robot arms, reichelt offers a comprehensive range of accessories. This includes not only grippers or camera systems, but also components that can be used to create safely sealed off work areas for the robot arms. If the arms are to work closely with the person, the appropriate safety technology reliably switches the robot off as soon as a person approaches.
As broad as the possible applications for robots are, the designs and types are just as varied. It does require some basic considerations in advance, but then a wide variety of tasks can be flexibly automated with robots &#; this increases productivity in the company and takes the strain off people.
Robots will support us in more and more areas in the future. It is therefore worthwhile to familiarize yourself with robotics as early as possible. Robots in school and training are therefore not only fun and loosen up the lessons, they also open up exciting prospects for future career choices.
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Robots are used in science and industry to replace or entertain humans and although they do not have to look like us nor have to perform tasks in a humane manner, many of them do. In fact, some of the most popular in the industry are robot manipulators which resemble the human arm.
Robot arms are designed to manipulate and transport parts, tools, or special manufacturing elements through reprogrammable movements to perform a variety of tasks. This is why they are commonly used in industrial environments, although there are also scale versions dedicated to STEM education and hobby robotics.
The mechanism of a robot manipulator consists of the articulated mechanical structure and the end-effector. The end-effector constitutes the interface with which the robot interacts with its environment, so it can be any device intended to manipulate objects (i.e. grippers and suction cups) or to transform them (i.e. laser engravers and 3D printing devices). The mechanical structure is composed of a kinematic chain constituted by a combination of links and joints. One end of the chain is fixed and is called the base and the end-effector is fixed to the free extremity of the chain.
The links are rigid members connecting the joints of the robotic manipulator and can be revolute or prismatic. They are considered revolute when they produce the relative displacement of two links joined by an axis (involves rotation between links), and prismatic when they produce the relative displacement of two links along an axis (linear motion).
Revolute Joint (R) Prismatic Joint (P)
An endless number of combinations can be created with these types of joints, and therefore there are many types of configurations.
Some of the most popular configurations are:
Articulated/Revolute Robot (RRR) SCARA Robot (RRP) Parallel Robot
Cartesian Robot (PPP) Polar Robot (RRP) Cylindrical Robot (RPP)
And that's only using three joints! But robotic arms can have as many as needed. However, what really matters is not the number of joints but what they can achieve. This is where the term &#;Degrees of Freedom&#; comes in. In general, the term Degrees of Freedom (DOF) is used to describe the number of parameters needed to specify the spatial pose of a rigid body or system.
They are described as:
Translational
Rotational
In theory, in a mechanism or linkage containing a number of connected rigid bodies, such as a robotic manipulator, the degrees of freedom measure the combined positioning capability of the system. However, in practice, DOF is often referred to as the number of single-axis rotational joints in the arm, where a higher number indicates increased flexibility. This is why you may have seen that some robotic arms have more than 6 degrees of freedom.
A robot that has mechanisms to control all 6 physical DOF is said to be holonomic. A robot with fewer controllable DOF than total DOF is said to be non-holonomic, and a robot with more controllable DOF than total DOF (such as the human arm which has 7 DOF) is said to be redundant.
Serial and parallel manipulator systems are generally designed to position an end-effector with 6 degrees of freedom. This provides a direct relationship between actuator positions and the configuration of the manipulator defined by its forward and inverse kinematics, which describe the actual arrangement of links and joints and determine the robot's possible motions, but we will further discuss this in the following tutorial. However, if you are planning on getting a robotic manipulator, but don&#;t know what you should be looking for, the following terms will also come in handy.
Although they seem very similar, accuracy and repeatability are different measurements. Repeatability is usually the most important for a robot and is similar to the concept of precision. To easily understand the difference here&#;s an example: when told to go to a certain position the arm could get only to within 2 mm of that position, this would be its accuracy which can be improved by calibration. However, if each time it is sent there it returns to within 0.2 mm of the position then the repeatability will be within 0.2 mm.
Those are some of the most important definitions when it comes to robot manipulators. However, if what you are looking for isn&#;t acquiring a robotic arm but building one then I suggest checking the How to Make a Robot Tutorial Series as well as the Robot Arm Torque Tutorial. And if you are looking for one but are still not sure where to start check out the Educational Robotic Arms, and the Semi-Professional Arms. Don't be shy to ask questions or contribute to the conversation in the replies to this post.
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