The dual-arm adaptable industrial robot is a new prototype without a name, without a price, and with a release date somewhere in the 2016.
Designed in the labs of Seiko Epson, it has some important features that will be discussed in the following, but one of these features is very important for a production line, and this is the flexibility to be moved. Most of the industrial robots are heavy, without senses, and locked in a cage to do not come in contact with the workers during the operation.
This dual-arm and with a strange head robot can be moved and independently perform simple tasks on assembly lines.
Seiko Epson Dual-Arm Robot
We identify up to six features that makes from this prototype a powerful dual-arm robot designed for a wide range of tasks. These features are:
- it has vision (it can recognize objects);
- force sensing (it can adjust the force applied);
- react to environment simulators;
- it is autonomously;
- designed for a wide range of tasks;
- flexibility to be moved on several assembly lines;
It is a trend in the field of industrial robots that add advanced features like vision or sense, and this is not just because it can do it, this is because it is necessary to have humans that works along robots and adaptable industrial robots. The robots that see, think, sense, and react to the environment changes will reshape the production lines, will increase the productivity and reduce the manufacturing costs.
Technology
The widespread introduction of industrial robots was introduced many years ago and started when the main solution in the factories was the manual labor. Since then many generations of industrial robots have been changed with robots that comes with improved feature. The dual-arm robot presented in this article is one of the first industrial robots designed with so many advanced features like vision or senses.
In this area of sensing robots for manufacturing process enters the Baxter, ABB Frida, Nextage or Robomotive robots.
The Epson SCARA robots are known for their accuracy, speed, compactness and lightweight. All of these features were kept in this new prototype, and more than that, the dual-arm robot can reproduce the human hand movements on assembly lines.
The no name dual-arm and a strange head robot have integrated new and existing advanced technologies designed for use in areas like image processing, vibration and control, software, or force sensing.
All of these technologies working together to ensure features like the human eye to see the objects in a three-dimensional space and recognize the position and orientation.
The force sensor is based on a new technology that give the robot a human-like control for the forced exerted by the arms without damaging the objects when are transported.
Both arms are equipped with multipurpose hands that can grasp, clamp, and insert objects of various shapes and sizes.
Few words about Epson
The Epson company has a tradition of several decades in building robots, a tradition that starts in 1981 and aiming to design accurate and efficient industrial robots to solve the manufacturing problems. With several types of industrial robots in the factories, Epson builds many successfully generations of industrial robots and now they come with a new series that brings advanced features and makes more flexible the manufacturing process.
The Japanese company is one of the leaders for industrial SCARA robots including here high-performance six-axis robots that are used in a wide range of production environments.