Lightweight collaborative manipulator
Background
In recent years, expectations for collaborative robots have been increasing in the field of industrial manipulators. The advantages of collaborative manipulators include the fact that, unlike ordinary industrial manipulators, they do not require protective fences and can perform direct teaching. However, at present, they have the disadvantage of being difficult to transport due to their large mass. Therefore, there is a need to reduce its weight.
Research Objective
There have been many studies on the weight reduction of manipulators in the conventional works. However, there is a lack of discussion on the impact of weight reduction on industrial robots and practical weight reduction. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of using lightweight materials in order to select effective structural materials for designing lightweight collaborative robots.
Methods
Plastics and composites are considered to be lightweight materials. In general, these lightweight materials have lower stiffness than metals. In this study, we construct a dynamic model that takes elasticity into account. By including a control system in this model, we can simulate the behavior of the manipulator during work in each material, and evaluate the size of the manipulator and the accuracy of the hand position.