I. Three Major Advantages of Industrial Robots
Advantage 1: Cost Savings. Rising labor costs are undoubtedly a major factor driving the replacement of human labor with machines across industries. Robots can save on increasingly expensive labor costs by replacing manual labor in production. Robots can operate 24 hours a day, requiring only one person to supervise them, or even one person to supervise two or more machines simultaneously, effectively saving on human resource costs. Furthermore, intelligent factories using industrial robots and automated production lines save space, allowing for more compact factory planning and reducing land resource costs.
Advantage Two: Convenient Supervision: In traditional enterprise production processes, despite numerous rules and regulations, employees often fail to fully implement them, making it difficult to prevent employee laziness and ensuring daily production capacity. The use of industrial robots significantly reduces manual labor, making personnel management simpler and more efficient for enterprises.
Thirdly, high safety: Using intelligent industrial robots in production maximizes worker safety, preventing accidents caused by negligence or fatigue. In highly repetitive industrial production workshops, human employees are prone to physical fatigue, leading to safety accidents. Using industrial robots ensures safety.
II. Six Subsystems of Industrial Robots
1. Mechanical structure system
From a mechanical structure perspective, industrial robots are generally divided into serial robots and parallel robots. A serial robot is characterized by the fact that movement on one axis changes the origin of the coordinate system on another axis, while movement on one axis in a parallel robot does not change the origin of the coordinate system on the other axis. Early industrial robots all used serial mechanisms. A parallel mechanism is defined as a closed-loop mechanism in which the moving platform and the fixed platform are connected by at least two independent kinematic chains, possessing two or more degrees of freedom and driven in parallel. A parallel mechanism has two components: the wrist and the arm. The arm's range of motion significantly affects the workspace, while the wrist connects the tool and the main body. Compared to serial robots, parallel robots have advantages such as higher stiffness, structural stability, greater load-bearing capacity, higher micro-motion accuracy, and lower motion load. In solving for position, the forward inversion problem is easy for serial robots but very difficult for serial robots; conversely, the forward inversion problem is difficult for parallel robots but very easy.
2. Drive system
A drive system is a device that provides power to a mechanical structure system. Based on the power source, drive systems are classified into four types: hydraulic, pneumatic, electric, and mechanical. Early industrial robots used hydraulic drives. However, due to problems such as leakage, noise, and low-speed instability, as well as the bulky and expensive power units, hydraulically driven industrial robots are currently only used in large, heavy-duty robots, parallel processing robots, and some special applications. Pneumatic drives offer advantages such as high speed, simple system structure, easy maintenance, and low cost. However, pneumatic devices operate at low pressures, making precise positioning difficult, and are generally only used for driving end effectors in industrial robots. Pneumatic grippers, rotary cylinders, and pneumatic suction cups, as end effectors, can be used for medium to small load workpiece gripping and assembly. Electric drive is currently the most widely used drive method. Its advantages include convenient power supply, fast response, high driving force, and easy signal detection, transmission, and processing. It also allows for various flexible control methods. The drive motors are generally stepper motors or servo motors. Direct drive motors are also used, but they are more expensive and have more complex control. The reducers used with the motors are generally harmonic reducers, cycloidal pinwheel reducers, or planetary gear reducers. Due to the large number of linear drive requirements in parallel robots, linear motors have been widely used in the field of parallel robots.
3. Sensing System
Robot perception systems transform various internal state and environmental information of the robot from signals into data and information that the robot itself or other robots can understand and apply. Besides sensing mechanical quantities related to its own working state, such as displacement, velocity, and force, visual perception technology is a crucial aspect of industrial robot perception. Visual servo systems use visual information as feedback signals to control and adjust the robot's position and posture. Machine vision systems are also widely used in quality inspection, workpiece identification, food sorting, and packaging. Perception systems consist of internal and external sensor modules; the use of intelligent sensors improves the robot's mobility, adaptability, and intelligence.
4. Robot-Environment Interaction System
A robot-environment interaction system is a system that enables robots to communicate and coordinate with devices in their external environment. Robots and external devices are integrated into a single functional unit, such as a manufacturing unit, welding unit, or assembly unit. Alternatively, multiple robots can be integrated into a single functional unit to perform complex tasks.
5. Human-computer interaction system
Human-computer interaction systems are devices that allow humans to communicate with robots and participate in robot control. Examples include standard computer terminals, command consoles, information display panels, and hazard alarms.
6. Control System
The task of a control system is to direct the robot's actuators to perform prescribed movements and functions based on the robot's operational instructions and signals fed back from sensors. If the robot lacks feedback capabilities, it is an open-loop control system; if it does, it is a closed-loop control system. Based on control principles, control systems can be categorized into program control systems, adaptive control systems, and artificial intelligence control systems. Based on the form of motion control, they can be classified as point-to-point control and continuous trajectory control.
