Feature Robotics & Motion Control
Up to the university challenge E
A Mitsubishi Electric industrial robot is providing a valuable service to roboticists at the Centre for Robotics Research (CoRe) at Kings College London as they strive to take the technology forward
ngineers, scientists and mathe- maticians at CoRe are working on a number of different projects that aim to develop robotic tech-
nology. Their time horizon is 25 years or more - the idea is not so much small scale improvements to existing tech- nologies but the foundation of funda- mentally new solutions - sometimes to problems that have yet to arise. To do this they set-up test rigs with state of the art robots and try to develop new functions and capabilities.
One of its busiest test rigs is based on the RV3SD - one of the latest Mitsubishi Electric industrial robots, which is designed to offer high performance and reliability to address demanding applications across many industries.
Professor Maria Fox explained the
centre’s strategic direction, “Today’s robots are very impressive, especially when you consider how quickly they have developed since the first genera- tion of the technology. We can now foresee the imminent achievement of a significant developmental goal - the ability to integrate multiple tasks of very different natures.
More versatility
“For instance, if you define washing up as manipulating dirty crockery through hot soapy water, today’s robots can do that. However, if you add in all the associated tasks - identi- fying crockery amongst other items, handling appropriately (for size, deli- cacy, slipperiness etc), changing the water, adding soap, checking for post washing cleanliness, stacking, drying and putting away - we need a new far more versatile robot. This is what we are aiming at with our current devel- opment programmes. “Additionally, if you then want your washing up robot to tidy the living room, vacuum the stairs, make the beds, walk the dog and check that the kids are OK, you’ll need another 50- 100 years of development.” The centre’s research activities deal with a broad range of topics, covering industrial automation, surgery, kine- matics and mechanisms, sensing, and monitoring and inspection, amongst others. It is also keen on developing robots as art installations, having recently collaborated with the Bartlett School of Art on a robot installation at the Tate Modern.
Automation OCTOBER 2013
Kaspar Althoefer, professor of robot- ics and intelligent systems and head of the centre, claims that some of the hardware associated with robots is already well developed and mature. He said, “It is difficult to improve upon the mechanics of a robot arm like the RV3SD. It performs its required functions very well, offering multiple axes of motion or ‘degrees of freedom’ and fulfills defined needs.”
Hands-on However, there are other robot mecha- nisms - such as hands - that are in their infancy. Today’s hands tend to have rigid palms, their fingers are not fully autonomous and there is far too little real time feedback on gripping pressure and friction with the object being held. Althoefer continued, “We have sev- eral hands in development that mimic far more closely the abilities of a human hand - and we can foresee them, say, peeling an orange or making accurate origami models.”
If you watch a person performing such tasks, it is notable that it is not just one hand that is moving. Usually two hands work in unison, and this requires that the arms are also per- forming synchronised and coordinated movements. Again the centre is at the cutting edge of understanding this and Mitsubishi control technology is pro- viding the data processing power. Such functions require the coordina- tion of both hands, both wrists, and all the major joints of the arms - they also need data from multiple feedback sen- sors to be analysed and interpreted in fractions of a second so that real time decision making becomes possible. Mitsubishi has long recognised that
sensor-based feedback enables direct interactive control of robot move- ments, so has been able to develop robots that are capable of assessing
Above: Robotic arm and hand
grip technology
incoming data and determining appro- priate responses immediately. Its new CRD series of robot controllers come with an option to integrate the robot control system directly with the iQ controller platform. Because this removes the need to have a dedicated communications network between the controller platform and the robot con- troller, the system is inherently faster and more reliable, allowing millisec- ond response to sensor readings. The robot controller can analyse signals from ultrasonic, infrared and laser proximity sensors, cameras and force/torque sensors, and then plan the robot movements accordingly. The system also incorporates colli- sion avoidance, object identification and multi-dimensional decision making etc. Professor Althoefer added, “Our areas of research interest include robot motion planning, programming, modelling and control. These prob- lems are easily tackled by humans but for robots, represent a mountain of high speed dynamic data processing. Algorithms for mobile robot motion planning are being developed by our teams to cope with cluttered environ- ments, reversal manoeuvres, moving objects and other problems.
Above: Mitsubishi Electric MELFA industrial robots RV range
“One of the common denominators in our work for many years to come will be steadily increasing the ability to absorb vast amounts of incoming real time data, process it and make appropriate decisions about how the robots react. One of the long term goals is to create robots that behave simi- larly to humans and can interact with humans in a natural way.”
Mitsubishi Electric
http://automation.mitsubishielectric.co.uk T: 01707 276 100
Enter 210 27
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72