SPOTLIGHT Robotics
The massive robotics innovations
spurred by the automotive industry By Rolf Horn, Applications Engineer at DigiKey
I
ndustrial robots are essential to modern manufacturing – executing a vast array of functions whilst coordinating tasks with other forms of automation. In fact, the $1 trillion automotive industry was the fi rst industry with the means to make large-scale use of robotics and further advance the technologies associated with robotics. Now, the vast majority of automotive manufacturing centres employ robots. Only over the last two decades have the fi elds of packaging, semiconductor production and the relatively new fi eld of automated warehousing hastened their robotics adoption to rival the automotive industry. Within robots themselves and generally industrial automation equipment lie electric motors, hydraulic systems, fl uid power systems, drives, controls, networking hardware, human-machine interfaces, software, sensing, feedback loops and safety components, among many other parts. These elements impart effi ciency by executing preprogrammed routines that can readily adapt to changing conditions in real time. Increasingly, it’s expected that robotic workcells also feature reconfi gurability to produce new automobile off erings as consumer preferences have come to evolve more rapidly than ever.
Robotics terminology The Oxford English Dictionary defi nes robots as “machines capable of automatically carrying out complex series of movements, especially programmable.” Confusing matters is that this defi nition could describe everything from washing machines to CNC machine tools. Even the ISO 8373 defi nition of a robot as an “automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multi-purpose manipulator, programmable in three or more axes” could describe a warehouse conveyor with vertical lift stations. However, all these machines would never normally be classifi ed as robots. The practical diff erentiator is that machines built for a single, very-clearly-
8 March 2024 | Automation
Omron scanner on a robot arm for picking tasks
defi ned use in a fi xed location aren’t usually considered robots – at least not in industrial circles. Automated systems classifi ed as robots are indeed often expected to exhibit high fl exibility – capable (with reconfi guration) of executing transport, sorting, assembly, welding and painting tasks that may vary day to day. These industrial robotic machines are also expected to be relocatable to new areas in a plant – whether for redeployment as manufacturing systems and reconfi gured, or continually movable on seventh-axis linear tracks to service workcell arrays in a line.
Robot families Robots in automotive production sites are broadly classifi ed by their mechanical structures – including their joint types, linkage arrangements, and degrees of freedom. Serial manipulator robotics include most industrial robots. Designs in this family have a linear chain of links with a base at one end and an end eff ector at the other end, with a single joint between each link in the chain. These include articulated robots, selective compliance articulated
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robot arm (SCARA) robots, collaborative six-axis robots, cartesian robots (essentially consisting of linear actuators), and (somewhat uncommon) cylindrical robots. Parallel manipulator robotics excel
where applications need high rigidity and operational speed. In contrast with
Simatic Robot Integrator with Simatic Robot Library
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