Industrial robots are widely used in automobile manufacturing, shipbuilding, steel, power equipment and other industries. In recent years, with the development of technology, industrial robotics technology is changing rapidly. What high-tech technologies do industrial robots involve?


Robot Operator Structure

Through the application of modern design methods such as finite element analysis, modal analysis and simulation design, the optimal design of robot manipulator is realized. Explore new high strength lightweight materials to further improve load/deadweight ratio. For example, the robot company, represented by KUKA, Germany, has changed the parallel parallelogram structure of the robot into an open chain structure, expanding the scope of the robot's work, and the application of light aluminium alloy materials has greatly improved the performance of the robot. In addition, the use of advanced RV reducer and AC servo motor makes the robot operator almost maintenance-free system. The mechanism is developing towards modularization and reconfiguration. For example, the servo motor, reducer and detection system in the joint module are integrated; the whole robot is constructed by restructuring the joint module and connecting rod module; and the modular assembly robot products are on the market abroad. The structure of the robot is more flexible and the control system is smaller and smaller. Both of them are developing towards integration. Using parallel mechanism and robot technology to achieve high-precision measurement and processing is the extension of robot technology to numerical control technology, which lays a foundation for the future integration of robot and numerical control technology.

Open, modular control system. With the development of open controller based on PC, it is easy to standardize and network; the device integration is improved, the control cabinet is becoming smaller and smaller day by day, and the modular structure is adopted; the reliability, easy operation and maintainability of the system are greatly improved. The performance of the control system has been further improved. It has developed from 6-axis robot which used to be the control standard to 21-axis or even 27-axis robot, and realized software servo and full digital control. Man-machine interface is more friendly. Language and graphical programming interface are being developed. The standardization and networking of robot controllers, as well as PC-based network controllers, have become a research hotspot. In addition to further improving the operability of online programming, the practicality of offline programming will become the focus of research, and offline programming has been realized in some fields.



Robot Sensing Technology

Sensors are playing an increasingly important role in robots. In addition to traditional sensors such as position, speed and acceleration, laser sensors, vision sensors and force sensors are also used in assembly and welding robots, and automatic seam tracking, automatic object positioning on automatic production lines and precise assembly operations are realized. It greatly improves the performance of the robot and its adaptability to the environment. The remote control robot uses the fusion technology of vision, sound, force and tactile sensors to model and control the environment. In order to further improve the intelligence and adaptability of the robot, the use of multiple sensors is the key to solve the problem. The research hotspot is the effective and feasible multi-sensor fusion algorithm, especially in the case of non-linear, non-stationary and non-normal distribution. Another problem is the practicality of the sensor system.

Network Communication Function

The latest robot controllers of YASKAWA in Japan and KUKA in Germany have realized the connection with Canbus, Profibus bus and some networks, which has made the robot move from independent application to network application, and also made the robot develop from special equipment to standardized equipment.

Robot remote control and monitoring technology

In some high-risk environments, such as nuclear radiation, deep water, toxicity, welding or other operations, there is a need for remote control robots to work instead of human beings. The development of modern remote control robot system is not to pursue full autonomous system, but to devote itself to the human-computer interaction control between operator and robot, that is, remote control plus local autonomous system constitutes a complete monitoring and remote control operation system, which makes the intelligent robot go out of the laboratory and enter the practical stage. The "Sojina" robot launched by the United States on Mars is the most famous example of the successful application of this system. Coordination control between multi-robots and operators can establish a wide range of robot remote control system through the network, and establish pre-display for remote control in the case of time delay.

Virtual Robot Technology

The role of virtual reality technology in robots has evolved from simulation and preview to process control, such as making the remote robot operator feel in the remote operating environment to manipulate the robot. Based on multi-sensor, multimedia, virtual reality and telepresence technology, the virtual teleoperation and human-computer interaction of robots are realized.


Robot performance-price ratio

The performance of the robot has been continuously improved (high speed, high precision, high reliability, easy operation and maintenance), while the price of the single machine has been declining. Due to the rapid development of microelectronics technology and the application of large scale integrated circuits, the reliability of robot system has been greatly improved. In the past, the reliability of robotic system MTBF was usually thousands of hours, but now it has reached 50,000 hours, which can meet the needs of any occasion.


Multi-Agent Control Technology

This is a new field of robotics research. This paper mainly studies the multi-agent group architecture, communication and negotiation mechanism, perception and learning methods, modeling and planning, group behavior control and so on.