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Configuration Support and Kinematics for a Reconfigurable Gantry-Tau Manipulator

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Author

Summary, in English

Affordable and competitive industrial automation is of key importance for small and medium enterprises, in Europe and elsewhere. A key factor is the introduction of new robot automation concepts that ease fast deployment and extend available task repertoire. The Gantry-Tau manipulator is a new robot concept. In contrast to other parallel kinematic manipulators (PKMs), it has a large working range. The high stiffness makes it ideal for a wide range of tasks such as grinding, deburring, and cutting. An additional aspect of such a PKM is the modularity, which in this work has been studied in terms of possibilities for assembly and mechanical reconfiguration at the end-user site, integration of such a kinematically different robot with a standard industrial controller, and new needs for methods/tools to support simple (re)configuration. What is needed for fully utilizing the modularity of the concept in typical SME manufacturing scenarios? A range of software tools and methods were found to be useful and necessary for efficient engineering and integration. For experimental evaluation, a full-scale prototype robot was designed and built, the kinematic software was developed and integrated into the ABB kinematics software, robot CAD software was adapted to the configuration needs, and both simulations and physical experiments were carried out. Our findings make us believe that enhanced software tools should be integrated on a higher symbolic (or meta-) level to better support transformation of data and code generation, but also that the Gantry-Tau type of robot (with adequate software support) will bring a new dimension of flexibility into SME manufacturing.

Publishing year

2007

Language

English

Pages

2957-2962

Publication/Series

2007 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (IEEE Cat No. 07CH37836D)

Document type

Conference paper

Publisher

IEEE - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Topic

  • Control Engineering
  • Computer Science

Keywords

  • robot CAD software
  • SME manufacturing
  • robot automation
  • reconfigurable Gantry-Tau manipulator
  • ABB kinematics software
  • parallel kinematic manipulators

Conference name

IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, 2007

Conference date

2007-04-10 - 2007-04-14

Conference place

Roma, Italy

Status

Published

Project

  • SMErobot
  • RobotLab LTH