Automated assembly lines have come a long way from the days of heaving metal in Mr. Ford’s concept factories. Industrial robots, after a boom in the 80s, are becoming increasingly faster and stronger to match the high-rise demands in production capacity.
Just in March 2006, Fatronik unveiled the fastest industrial handling robot in the world at the time named Quickplacer [1]. Fatronik is a Spain-based R&D company with technological expertise in manufacturing production.
Watching Quickplacer at work is like watching a magician on stage. It is capable of handling items of up to 2Kg at a stunning rate of 200 items per minute. It can be further integrated with vision camera for movement guidance in accordance with the shape and orientation of the objects and also the speed of conveyor belts.
This parallel robotic platform has an effector that is manipulated by 4 precision actuators that can control four degrees of freedom( 3 translational and 1 rotational along the vertical axis). Its high speed is characterized by dynamic acceleration of 15G and a braking capacity that is more than 5 times greater than a Formula 1 racecar. Even in high speed motion, the robot can still maintain an absolute positional accuracy of +/- 0.2mm [2]. An optimized path planning is developed for an efficient movement and to avoid discontinuities in acceleration.
This robot is designed for small mass handling industries such as food processing (e.g. candy packaging), electronics components, and pharmaceutical products.
Eugene Peng NT061399W
References
[1] Fatronik News Release:
http://www.fatronik.com/en/noticia.php?id=53
[2] Quickplacer technical characteristics:
http://www.fatronik.com/documentos/proyectos/Characteristics.pdf
4 comments:
Hi, Eugene,
Thanks for the fastest robot in the world. It is indeed amazing that this Quickplacer can handle 200 objects (less than 2kg) in a minute. Cannot imagine how its hands move in such a fast speed.
This reminds me of the robots used in BMW plant in Munich. There are hundreds of similar robots working on the assembly line and making things automated.
Superb!
Xu Xiao
U036505H
WOoohooo...
Imagine this.
In 5 mins, a group of your friends are visiting you but your house is super messy. On a touch of a button, a gigantic spider-like Quickplacer cames along and tidy up the whole place in 1 min. You still have time to make the coffee for your awaiting friends.
So cool. Besides the industrial use, i guess this quickplacer can be modified to excel at home. And we shall name it as "Mess Angel" ya? :>
Tan Xie Xing
U046240M
Koh Yew Tong U036316U
This fastest robot seems to be very useful in the industrial usage. But i'm just wondering if it is able to handle and differentiate mulitple objects in one time. Cos if it don't, this might be a major drawback as it is limited to only handle specific shape and size of the objects.
Azhar Risyad Sunaryo u037028m
Wow, so cool. I think I have seen this robot somewhere before. If I am not wrong, is this the robot that is programmed using Neural Networks?
With this in assembly lines, I think the prices of cars might go down since they can produce more car compared to before using this.
But don't know, any drawbacks of this machine? Like it needed quite a lot of maintenance maybe?
But once again, Great technology :D
Post a Comment