What Factors Determine The Flexibility of Industrial Robots?

With the rapid development of the robot industry, all kinds of industrial robots have been widely used in all walks of life, from simple material handling to machine maintenance, from welding to cutting, from assembly to spraying, we can find that these industrial robots have different shapes , the functional performance is different, so what determines the flexibility and range of activities of industrial robots? This problem is more complicated, but there is a key factor that determines the flexibility and range of activities of robots to a large extent, that is The degree of freedom of an industrial robot is usually also called the number of axes.

What is the degree of freedom of an industrial robot?
Usually used as a technical indicator of a robot, it reflects the flexibility of the robot's movement, and can be expressed by the number of linear movement, swing or rotation of the axis. The number of joints that the robot mechanism can move independently is called the degree of freedom of the robot mechanism, referred to as the degree of freedom (Degree of Freedom), which is represented by the abbreviation DOF. The current control method used by industrial robots is to treat each joint on the mechanical arm as a separate servo mechanism, that is, each axis corresponds to a servo, each servo is controlled by the bus, and the controller is uniformly controlled and coordinated.

Application of robots with different degrees of freedom in industry
The number of robot axes determines its degrees of freedom. Is the more degrees of freedom the better? The more degrees of freedom, the closer to the action function of the human hand, the better the versatility; but the more degrees of freedom, the more complex the structure, the higher the overall requirements for the robot, this is the robot A contradiction in design. As the number of axes increases, so does the flexibility of the robot. However, in the current industrial applications, four-axis and six-axis industrial robots are most used, and the choice of the number of axes usually depends on the specific application. This is because, in some applications, high flexibility is not required, and three-axis and four-axis robots are more cost-effective, and three-axis and four-axis robots also have a great advantage in speed. For simple applications, such as picking and placing parts between conveyor belts, a four-axis robot is sufficient. If the robot needs to work in a narrow space, and the mechanical arm needs to be twisted and reversed, a six-axis or seven-axis robot is the best choice.

At present, six-axis robots are the most widely used in the industrial field. An industrial robot with six joints is very similar to a human arm. It has the equivalent of a shoulder, elbow and wrist. Its "shoulders" are usually mounted on a fixed base structure. The role of the human arm is to move the hand to different positions, while the role of the six-axis robot is to move the end effector. Various actuators suitable for specific application scenarios are installed at the end of the robotic arm, such as grippers, blowtorches, drills and Paint sprayer, etc., to complete different work tasks.

Recently, various robot manufacturers have released the latest human-machine collaborative robots, almost all of which use seven-axis redundant degrees of freedom industrial robots. Internationally well-known robot manufacturers have made great efforts to launch new products of seven-axis robots to seize the high-end new market. The difference is very obvious from now on.

Development Trend of Redundant Degree of Freedom Robot
Six degrees of freedom is the minimum number of degrees of freedom with the ability to complete spatial positioning, and robots with more than six axes are collectively called redundant degrees of freedom robots. The research of robot kinematics aims to solve the movement or rotation of each joint when the end effector of the robot arm reaches a certain position in space, which is the cornerstone and key of the whole robotics. With the rapid development of human civilization, robots are required to complete the work in many industries, high altitude, deep sea, nuclear waste and dangerous operating environments, which puts forward higher requirements for the reliability, operability and intelligence of robot motion control. Require. In the future, as its precision continues to increase, redundant freedom robots will have more advantages in avoiding obstacles, overcoming singularities, flexibility and fault tolerance. In the face of complex working environments and changing job requirements, redundant freedom Industrial robots will have more uses. It is believed that in the near future, it will replace manual operations for more precise operations.