Yaskawa Robotics - technical performance characteristics of dresspacks for industrial robots

1. Technical performance characteristics of industrial robot dresspack - intelligence

The reason why the intelligent type is placed at the back of the Z is because compared with the mainstream demand for robot dresspacks in the market (that is, strong, fast, and accurate), it is not the most urgent for the time being. This also reflects the advantages of traditional industrial robots (hard work, quality and quantity, is a good hand at "work") and shortcomings (but very "stupid", old to be taught).

But that doesn't mean that intelligence isn't important, on the contrary, companies have already started to invest in technology. For example, how to make the robot line pack better understand the command intention of people, understand and plan tasks relatively autonomously, without having to let people tell it how to go point by point; How to make the robot dresspack automatically adapt to changes in the external environment (the light darkens and affects image recognition, and the items on the conveyor belt are damaged and need special treatment); How to judge the assembly quality of parts through touch, vision, hearing, and other perceptions, etc.

2. Technical performance characteristics of industrial robot dresspack - mechanical and electrical performance

Industrial robot dresspacks can generally achieve a motion accuracy of less than 0.1 mm (referring to the accuracy of repeated motion to the point), grasp objects weighing up to one ton, and stretch up to three or four meters. Although this kind of performance may not be able to easily complete some of the "crazy" processing requirements on Apple's mobile phones, it is enough to successfully complete the task for most industrial applications. As the performance of robot dresspacks has gradually improved, tasks that were previously impossible have become feasible (such as laser welding or cutting, which once required specialized high-precision equipment to guide the direction of the laser, but with the improvement of robot accuracy, it is now possible to rely on the accurate movement of the robot itself).

However, compared with traditional high-end equipment, such as high-precision CNC machine tools, laser calibration equipment, or special environment (high temperature or ultra-low temperature) equipment, industrial robots are still unreachable.

3. Technical performance characteristics of industrial robot dresspack - man-machine cooperation

Traditional industrial robot packs work in cages because they are so dangerous (imagine a guy holding tens or hundreds of kilograms at a speed of four meters per second, and no one wants to get close). The main reason is that the general robot dresspack, based on cost and technical considerations, will not integrate additional sensors to perceive special external situations (such as sudden human touch), it will only "stupidly" move day after day according to the human program, unless there is an external signal to tell it to stop.

Therefore, the common solution is to equip the robot dresspack with a cage, and when the cage door is opened, the robot dresspack will automatically pause when it receives a signal. The cage may not be expensive, but after all, it is necessary to carefully consider the production line layout, increase the production line area, and change the way of human-machine cooperation, which will affect the production efficiency. Therefore, the industrial robots that have attracted more attention recently are "proud" to be able to work with people safely, such as Rethink Robotics' Baxter, UNIversal Robots' PR series, and many traditional industrial robot giants (abb, kuka, Yaskawa, etc.) semi-concept semi-finished robot pipeline packs.

4. Technical performance characteristics of industrial robot dresspack - ease of use

The essence of the work of the traditional robot dresspack is to continuously go through one path point at a time, and at the same time receive or set up peripheral I/O signals (old and other settings such as fixtures, conveyor lines, etc.). The process of guiding the robot dresspack to do this is the robot dresspack programming. Almost every *** company has its own programming language and environment, which requires the robot dresspack operator to participate in learning and training. When the scope of application of robots increases, this cost begins to appear.

These manufacturers have a reason to maintain their own programming environment, first, the industrial robot wiring pack began to be done on a large scale forty years ago, at that time there was no object-oriented and other mainstream advanced programming concepts that are now widely known and generally recognized, secondly, their own technology in the embryonic stage will inevitably be different from competitors, and it is understandable to maintain a programming method, thirdly, because their large customers are often traditional industrial customers, such as large automobile manufacturers, these customers seek stability, Naturally, I don't want your robot pipeline package to catch a craze and change the programming method in a few years, so that they have to throw away decades of experience and spend a lot of money on training and learning again.

However, in the industry, everyone has long thought about whether programming can be intuitive and simple, but in the traditional manufacturers, except for the repeated conceptual demonstrations (such as the use of exoskeletons, 3D images, virtual reality, iPhone, etc.), there has been no commercial practical progress, so that everyone wants to vomit when they hear keywords such as "simple programming" again.

But fortunately, there are still latecomers who dare to challenge, and they have also made achievements from scratch and become a recognized selling point. This also vividly demonstrates why disruptive technologies often do not succeed in *** companies (although they have sufficient resources), but are always carried forward by later challengers. Because every step away from disruptive technology, people are often one step away from their iron rice bowls, and the internal and external resistance is great!

In any case, the ease of use of robots has begun to be valued, and how people can play with robots as quickly as iPhones without any (or too much) training has become the direction in which large manufacturers have begun to invest heavily.

5. Technical performance characteristics of industrial robots - cost

The cost of robot dresspack ranges from tens of thousands of RMB for small models to millions of RMB for large models. This cost is naturally lower than that of high-end professional manufacturing equipment, but it may also be higher than the automation solutions cobbled together by small domestic integrators. However, from the welcome of the Western industry and the domestic manufacturing industry to the robot dresspack in recent years, it shows that the economic advantages of robot dresspack automation have generally reached a critical point, exceeding other alternatives (manual, or special aircraft), and it seems that the cost is still worth it.

In fact, if you want to take the old road of traditional robot line packs, there is not much room for hardware cost reduction. The dresspack of an industrial robot is basically an open-loop motion mechanism, which relies on the high-precision coordination of the motor and the gearbox. And most of the key components of *** manufacturers are bought from several manufacturers in Japan, (this is also a robot line pack made by domestic companies themselves, buying the same parts, it will not be much cheaper, because Japanese manufacturers will not give you much discount for this amount). Unless Chinese parts manufacturers can calm down and strive to catch up with Japan's technology, so as to break the monopoly for many years with price advantages, can they really promote the development of domestic robot pipe pack manufacturers.

The other is to find a different way and pursue other technologies and markets. For example, Rethink Robotics even considered using plastic gearboxes to reduce costs, and to compensate for the loss of motion accuracy through vision, just like the human eye assists in the subtle operation of the hand. But after all, you can't reach the sky in one step, so the Baxter robot dresspack can't be compared to traditional robots in terms of accuracy and speed for the time being, but it is enough for the material handling applications. Perhaps with Rethink's efforts, it will make up for the poor hardware through the intelligence of the software to compete with the traditional industrial robot dresspack (that is, it will really subvert these traditional large manufacturers).

6. Technical performance characteristics of industrial robot dresspack - versatility

The dresspack of industrial robots is programmable and supports multi-degree-of-freedom motion, so the application is more flexible. Although not as flexible as humans, industrial robot dresspacks are much more flexible than many special machines that are common in industrial automation (mechatronic integration solutions tailored for a type of industrial application or a customer). When industrial applications are not too much to change, robots can be reprogrammed to meet new needs without having to make a large investment in hardware.

But correspondingly, its relative shortcomings will be efficiency. After all, the machine is customized for one application, so it achieves efficiency optimization at the expense of versatility, and does a good job in terms of throughput, a metric that customers care about.

Yaskawa Robotics - technical performance characteristics of dresspacks for industrial robots

Yaskawa Robotics - technical performance characteristics of dresspacks for industrial robots

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