AS NASA’s famous robots scout around the Red Planet looking for Martians and minerals, the bizarre looking machines seem far removed from the factory floor. But intelligent mobile robots like Spirit and Opportunity are closer to being used in manufacturing plants than many people would think.
Australian Robotics and Automation Association’s President, Dr Gordon Wyeth told Manufacturers’ Monthly that mobile robots are already available.
“Particularly in the manufacturing sector we are starting to see new products coming out now which are delivering goods intelligently around the factory without the need for laying down guide wires or guide cables…machines now can intelligently go from place to place and collect parts and take them to the appropriate work cell which opens up a new different way of structuring the manufacturing environment,” Wyeth said.
According to Wyeth, the main advantage of mobile robots is their flexibility. In materials handling applications, he said they will eliminate the element of human error, reducing goods handling accidents and losses.
“Mobile robots are going to just keep getting smarter to a point where they can get integrated into flexible manufacturing systems,” he said.
Robotic Automation’s group technical director, Mathew Cygler admitsintegrating intelligent robots into production systems can be very complex, and this continues to be a barrier to wider industrial adoption.
“To set up a robot for simple tasks is not so difficult, but if you have a more demanding task, it takes a little bit of time, engineering and cost. So by having these more intelligent robots, the trend is to make this cost effective, otherwise the whole project will not go ahead. It’s not the cost of the robot, it’s the cost of engineering the robot into the system,” Cygler told Manufacturers’ Monthly.
Packaged solutions could offer the answer, Cygler continued. “It’s like buying a car. You don’t want to buy an engine and all the rest. You want to buy a working set up…more and more people will be happy to buy working set ups which they can put on a truck and transport to their factory which is already organised, designed and tested, and very quickly get into production using this kind of system,” he said.
Wyeth agrees there is a balance between efficiency and flexibility and attempts to totally automate manufacturing have failed in the past because of the inflexibility and the amount of programming required to completely automate the line.
“Now the future of what we’re looking at in terms of the way that robotics can develop is to reduce the programming requirement and to increase the flexibility of the robots for different tasks,” Wyeth said.
Cygler suggests that for more “clever” tasks to be carried out by robots, manufacturers should consider robots with vision based intelligent sensing systems. “The vision based system inspects the product, measures the product and recognises the product…Obviously that task could be done by a human, but a human actually could not do that task without the use of very special measuring devices…By the naked eye you couldn’t do it. Even by measuring with a gauge it would be time consuming. By using a robot with that specific type of device, this is done automatically, and very fast. It takes a couple of seconds.”
Wyeth said robot movements are also becoming more precise, allowing them to be used in new high accuracy applications.
“The big problem with precision manufacturing with a robot arm is that typically they have a series of motors, six motors in series one after the other and each joint or motor introduces a certain amount of inaccuracy in the tool point placement. The new type of robot structures are called parallel robots where instead of the actuators acting in series, they act in parallel. This means the two actuators can really work against each other to lock the tool point in place.”
Wyeth warns manufacturers to be aware that robotics is developing very quickly.
“There’s been a period of consolidation over the past ten years where a lot of robot arm technology and the software has become very good and the robots themselves have become incredibly reliable.
“Robot sales, if you look at international trends last year increased by 25%. Robot sales are on the way up. People are using robots again. Robot manufacturers are responding to what manufacturers want and the things that they want to see automated in their factories and they should expect to see and demand to see new products from robot manufacturers and from robot researchers,” Wyeth said.