| Summary: | Collaborative robots (Cobot) are advanced robots that are designed for human-machine interaction in close proximity. Cobot differs from traditional industrial robots which works in independently with minimum human contact involved. This new technology has emerged to help human with various tasks, and it has gotten more popular as development advances in recent years, making automation easier than ever.
Despite the advances in Cobot technology, not all aspects have been taken into account. Most Cobots today are positioned at a fixed workstation, which greatly lowers its efficiency as the number of tasks it could perform depends greatly on the available space around it. It would also be more difficult for a human to interact with a Cobot when it can only be accessed at a fixed place. This usually results in implementation of multiple Cobots at various positions, which is extremely costly, even unaffordable, especially for small and mid-sized companies.
One of the solutions to this problem is to implement the Cobots on autonomous mobile robots (AMR), which allows the Cobot to transfer among different workstations to maximize efficiency. However, AMRs are expensive. This implementation often results in a very high cost. Although the Cobot is now more efficient, the AMR is not. As its purpose is limited to transferring the Cobot, the AMR loses all other task potentials, which is not desirable due to its high cost.
For a more efficient solution, a new product is currently under development at Schaeffler Hub for Advanced Research (SHARE) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) where a Cobot is stationed on a platform which can be coupled and decoupled with Schaeffler’s AMR. This allows for Cobot transfer among stations while freeing the AMR for other tasks.
The purpose of this project is to design a lifting mechanism for the Cobot platform which ensures freedom of movement when coupled with the AMR and stability when placed at a workstation.
This research is supported by the Schaeffler Hub for Advanced Research at Nanyang Technological University (SHARE@NTU).
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