Development of an Autonomous Mobile Robotic Manipulator with Performance Augmentation for Large-Scale Industrial Manufacturing

robotics

manufacturing

mechanism design

The proposed research project is directly in line with advanced manufacturing by developing a novel autonomous mobile robotic manipulator with performance augmentation for large-scale manufacturing. The designed robotic manipulator consists of a mobile vehicle and a robotic platform, and they will be integrated with an industrial robot to perform manufacturing processes. The performance augmentation of the robotic manipulator will be realized through the design concepts, methods, and technologies presented in this research. For details, a new parallel mechanism will be introduced to construct the robotic platform with high stiffness, load capability, dexterity, and manipulability. A gravity balancing (or gravity compensation) method will be applied to constitute a zero-gravity behavior (the effect of gravity is theoretically zero) for the robotic platform. The balancing design will help the robotic platform to operate with very small input torques and consumed energy while improving the safety, accuracy, and performance reliability of the robot. The joining of a robotic platform and an industrial robot (the combined manipulator is known as the hybrid parallel-serial robotic manipulator) will ensure high flexibility, functionality, and versatility to fulfill the manufacturing requirements. Implementing the mobile vehicle to the hybrid robotic manipulator will increase the mobility of the robot, making it adaptable for multiple operation tasks in a large volume, e.g., a whole manufacturing factory. The use of a real-time navigation system will guide and coordinate the robot autonomously to desired locations. Last, the developed mobile robotic manipulator will be taken to pursue experiments with actual manufacturing tasks to demonstrate the high value-added and promising research direction in advanced robotic manufacturing.

Published

December 13, 2022

Featured in [1]–[4].

References

[1]

V. L. Nguyen, “Gravity balancing of a two-degree-of-freedom parallel robotic platform with variable payloads,” Journal of Mechanical Design, vol. 145, no. 2, Dec. 2022, doi: 10.1115/1.4056258.

[2]

V. L. Nguyen, “Realization of a gear-spring balancer with variable payloads and its application to serial robots,” Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics, vol. 15, no. 4, Nov. 2022, doi: 10.1115/1.4055739.

[3]

V. L. Nguyen, “Design of a compact gear-spring mechanism for static balancing of variable payloads,” Journal of Mechanical Design, vol. 144, no. 12, Aug. 2022, doi: 10.1115/1.4055121.

[4]

V. L. Nguyen, “Gravity balancing design of a 3-DOF hybrid robotic manipulator with variable payloads,” Nov. 2021, doi: 10.1115/imece2021-69857.