INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

An industrial robot could be a general-purpose programmable machine possessing certain anthropomorphic features. The foremost obvious anthropomorphic, or human-like, feature is that the robot’s mechanical arm, or manipulator. The control unit for a contemporary industrial robot may be a computer which will be programmed to execute rather sophisticated subroutines, thus providing the robot with an intelligence that sometimes seems almost human.

The robot’s manipulator, combined with a high-level controller, allows an industrial robot to perform a range of tasks like loading and unloading production machine, spot welding, and spraying. Robots are typically used as substitutes for human workers in these tasks. The primary industrial robot was installed in an exceedingly die-casting operation at Ford Motor Company.
The robot’s job was to unload die castings from the die-casting machine.
This section considers various aspects of robot technology and applications, including how industrial robots are programmed to perform their tasks.
An industrial robot consists of a mechanical manipulator and a controller to maneuver it and perform other related functions. The mechanical manipulator consists of joints and links which will position and orient the tip of the manipulator relative to its base.
The controller unit consists of electronic hardware and software to control the joints in a very coordinated fashion to execute the programmed work cycle. Robot anatomy is concerned with the mechanical manipulator and its construction.


Manipulator Joints and Links
A joint during a robot is comparable to a joint in an exceedingly physical structure. It provides relative movement between two parts of the body. Connected to every joint are an input link and an output link. Each joint moves its output link relative to its input link. The robot manipulator consists of a series of link–joint–link combinations. The output link of 1 joint is that the input link for the subsequent joint.

Typical industrial robots have five or six joints. The coordinated movement of those joints gives the robot its ability to maneuver, position, and orient objects to perform useful work. Manipulator joints may be classified as linear or rotating, indicating the motion of the output link relative to the input link.


Manipulator Design
Using joints of the 2 basic types, each joint separated from the previous by a link, the manipulator is built. Most industrial robots are mounted to the ground. the bottom is link 0; this is often the input link to joint 1 whose output is link 1, which is that the input to joint 2 whose output link is link 2; so forth, for the quantity of joints within the manipulator.
Robot manipulators can usually be divided into two sections: arm-and-body assembly and wrist assembly. There are typically three joints related to the arm and-body assembly, and two or three joints related to the wrist. The function of the arm-and-body is to position an object or tool, and also the wrist function is to properly orient the article or tool. Positioning is worried with moving the part or tool from one location to a different.


Orientation is anxious with precisely aligning the item relative to some stationary location within the work area.
To accomplish these functions, arm-and-body designs differ from those of the wrist. Positioning requires large spatial movements, while orientation requires twisting and rotating motions to align the part or tool relative to a fixed position within the workplace. The arm-and-body consists of enormous links and joints, whereas the wrist consists of short links. The arm-and-body joints often include both linear and rotating types, while the wrist joints are nearly always rotating types.
Work Volume and Precision of Motion one among the important technical considerations of an industrial robot is that the size of its work volume. Work volume is defined because the envelope within which a robot manipulator can position and orient the tip of its wrist. This envelope is decided by the number of joints, furthermore as their types and ranges, and therefore the sizes of the links. Work volume is very important because it plays a big role in determining which applications a robot can perform.
The definitions of control resolution, accuracy, and repeatability developed for NC positioning systems apply to industrial robots. A robot manipulator is, after all, a positioning system. In general, the links and joints of robots aren’t nearly as rigid as their machine counterparts, and then the accuracy and repeatability of their movements don’t seem to be pretty much as good.


End Effectors
An industrial robot may be a general purpose machine. For a robot to be
useful in a very particular application, it must be equipped with special tooling designed
for the appliance. An end effector is that the special tooling that connects to the robot’s


wrist-end to perform the precise task. There are two general varieties of end effector:
tools and grippers. A tool is employed when the robot must perform a processing operation. The special tools include spot-welding guns, arc-welding tools, spray-painting nozzles, rotating spindles, heating torches, and assembly tools (e.g., automatic screwdriver). The robot is programmed to control the tool relative to the work part being processed.