Industrial robots replacing humans in production is a significant future trend in manufacturing, forming the foundation for intelligent manufacturing and ensuring the future realization of industrial automation, digitalization, and intelligence. Harsh production environments, labor shortages due to an aging population, and high human training costs are driving the increasing demand for industrial robots.
Basic components of industrial robots
An industrial robot consists of three basic parts: the main body, the drive system, and the control system.
The main body consists of the base and actuators, including the arm, wrist, and hand; some robots also have a locomotion mechanism. The wrist, also known as the end effector, is where grippers, tools, sensors, etc., can be mounted.
Drive system: includes power unit and transmission mechanism, used to enable the actuator to produce corresponding actions.
Control system: issues command signals to the drive system and actuators according to the input program, controlling the industrial robot to move as required.
Industrial robot classification
Classification by joint coordinate form
Cartesian coordinate robot (PPP)
Cartesian coordinate robots, also known as single-axis manipulators, change the spatial position of their end effector (hand) by moving along three mutually perpendicular coordinate axes: x, y, and z.
Cylindrical coordinate robot (RPP)
The change in the spatial position of the robot's end effector is achieved by two translational coordinates and one rotational coordinate.
Spherical coordinate robot (RRP)
Also known as polar coordinates, the movement of a robot arm consists of one linear motion and two rotations: extension and contraction along the x-axis, pitch around the y-axis, and rotation around the z-axis.
Articulated Robots (RRR)
Also known as articulated robotic arms or articulated mechanical arms, they are suitable for automated operations in many industrial fields, such as automated assembly, painting, material handling, and welding. They are divided into vertical articulated robots and planar (horizontal) articulated robots.
In addition, articulated robots can be classified according to their working nature, such as handling robots, palletizing robots, welding robots, painting robots, laser cutting robots, etc.
Classification by number of robot axes
Traditional six joints
A six-axis robot has six tandem rotary joints. Traditional six-joint robots are divided into general-purpose six-joint robots and special-purpose six-joint robots.
Seven-axis robot
Also known as a redundant robot. Compared to a six-axis robot, the additional axis allows the robot to avoid certain specific targets, facilitates the end effector to reach specific positions, and is more flexible in adapting to certain special working environments.
Collaborative robots
Collaborative robots, often shortened to cobot or co-robot, are robots capable of safely interacting with or coming into direct contact with humans. They combine the precision and repeatability of robots with unique human skills and abilities. Humans excel at solving imprecise and ambiguous problems, while robots excel in precision, strength, and durability.
Four-axis/SCARA robot
A four-axis robot is a "selective articulated robotic arm". The arm of a four-axis robot can move freely in a geometric plane, that is, translational degrees of freedom in the X, Y and Z directions and rotational degrees of freedom about the Z-axis.
Delta Parallel Robot
Delta robots are high-speed, light-load parallel robots. They typically capture target objects through teach programming or vision systems, and the spatial position of the gripper center (TCP) is determined by three parallel servo axes to achieve operations such as transporting and processing the target objects.
Classification by control system
Categorized by whether or not feedback is received
Divided into open-loop control and closed-loop control
Classification by Expected Control Quantity
Divided into force control, position control, and hybrid control
Force control is divided into: direct force control, impedance control, and force-position hybrid control.
Position control is divided into: single-joint position control (position feedback, position-velocity feedback, position-velocity-acceleration feedback) and multi-joint position control (decomposed motion control, centralized control).
According to intelligent control
It is divided into fuzzy control, adaptive control, optimal control, neural network control, fuzzy neural network control, and expert control.
