Human-friendly Robot Design Offers Greater Safety

In the last few years, there’s been a growing interest in the emerging field of human-centric robots. Such robots involve the close interaction between human beings and robotic manipulation systems. Along with the ability to support a wide range of commercial uses, applications for human-friendly robot designs are notable in manufacturing, home care, medicine, and entertainment.

However, a significant challenge to these applications is safety. How can the robots be enough strong, fast, accurate to perform the needful work, while also being safe for any physical interaction?

Let’s explore the answer today.

  • Earlier Approach to Robot Design

Traditionally robots mainly relied on various electromagnetic actuators that offered brilliant controllability but substandard power-to-weight ratios as compared to the pneumatic muscles. Further, they had an inability to exert a sustained force without high transmitting ratios between the load and the motor.

But a high transmitting ratio contributes to high mechanical impedance in the robot arm that doesn’t ensure safety when a biological arm comes in its close proximity. Early efforts to enhance the safety of robot arms all the while maintaining their control performance included powering the joints with cables after relocating the actuators to the base, using high-strength composite materials (inspired by human bones) while designing links to minimize inertia, and utilizing a series of elastic actuators.

Further works employed energy-absorbing layers, variable compliance, and proximity sensors for detecting any impending collisions.

Compact valves in this type of robotic arm resulted in a limitation of performance in steady-state and transient operation. The restricted flow rate also caused significant errors in transient conditions. Their random on-off manner gave rise to unproductive overworking or oscillation in operation, especially at a high pressure.

  • Contemporary Approach to Build a Robot

The second-generation roboticists seek to address the discovered limitation. The new robot design incorporates various parallel pneumatic actuators at various joints for increasing the range of available torque motion without becoming extremely bulky. The actuators are usually controlled by an innovative proportional valve system for smooth force control and fast response.

The valves along with several components like mini actuators are housed in a soft and thin-walled structure that offers an ideal combination of robustness and lightweight.

The new design further exploits valves at a high flow rate and delivers a proportional flow control feature. Such a proportional valve subsequently achieves a faster response and a smooth convergence to the optimum pressure.

The first-generation arms utilized a polymer structure as their central bone support. This structure was made by using Selective Laser Sintering or SLS with a glass nylon. In contrast, the new arm is produced using FDM that allows a combination of soft and hard materials and various sensors and other discrete parts that can be integrated into a single heterogeneous structure.

Conclusion

Through this experiment, the roboticists find out that additional pneumatic muscles that are connected in parallel deliver a wide range of motion without affecting the response time and joint torque. Safety simulations utilizing the normalized effective inertia or mass validate the arm safety traits that are somewhat comparable to those of a human arm.

In terms of designing, ongoing work is focused on incorporating several force sensors into the structure and then covering it with a compliant skin to deliver responsive, powerful, realistic, and human-safe robots.

To know more about robot design, feel free to reach the robotic experts at Custom Entertainment Solutions. Call 01.801.410.4869 and visit the official website.

How Robots are Outsmarting Humans in the 21st Century?

Robots are considered to be one of the most useful man-made creations in the 21st century. If there is anything that symbolizes a person’s intelligence and creativity, it is the various robotic designs that are being actualized. There is a whole genre in literature and movies dedicated to robots and robot-related topic popularly termed as the ‘science-fiction’ genre.

In reality, too, it is predicted that the future will be about co-existing with robots, where every family will have some or the other kind of robot (like a robot with an animatronic face) to carry out specific tasks. Robots are created with the objective to perform various tasks better than humans. In recent times, the highly competitive prices of robots and companies offering animatronic parts for sale have given a big boost to the innovators to develop robots capable of executing varied tasks in industry as well as day-to-day life.

In this blog, we will look at the various functions that a robot (with or without an animatronic face) can perform unlike humans:

Manages boring tasks easily : There are certain jobs which are repeating and tedious in nature. Doing such a job is very boring as you have to do the same job over and over again. This repetitive nature of the job not only makes it uninteresting but also increases the scope of committing a mistake as sometimes you may not focus on it fully. Furthermore, if you are engaged in this kind of job for a long period of time, then there is a greater likelihood that you might fell prey to few debilitating conditions. This could be carpel tunnel syndrome or maybe even more serious.

Research have found out that any worker who is doing a job which is repetitive in nature for a long period of time than will become depressed and the condition will get serious as the individual spends more time on the same job. That is why companies are slowly transferring such assembly-line jobs to robots with or without an animatronic face. A robot does not face any problem doing the same job 24X7 for years on end. Unlike humans, a robot can do the same job without any lag in concentration.

Comes with extreme sensing : Robots that are equipped with highly sensitive sensors like cameras and microphones can do things that humans can only dream of. Nowadays, robots are equipped with infrared camera, material penetrating sensors and highly sensitive microphones. This allows the robot to look through the wall and even pick out the tiniest of sound. This makes robots extremely useful for security services as well as for inspecting any leaks at an industrial site. Humans are restricted by their sense organs of how much in detail they can see or hear. Robots, on the other hand, depends on camera, microphones and other sensors to collect information. And as these sensors’ capabilities are increasing exponentially over the years, the ability of a robot to see or hear things far exceeds that of humans.

Have good strength and speed : Collaborative robots are a great force multiplier for humans to do a task that requires strength and speed. Robots with or without an animatronic face are nowadays widely used in industries to do a variety of jobs. These can include heavy lifting of items or even doing precision engineering that needs a lot of accuracy and speed. Companies are nowadays relying on robots to move or assemble heavy objects in warehouses. This minimises the risk of physical injury or accidents to the workers. And as these robots can do much more than their human counterpart, they save a lot of time and money for the company.

Greater focus than humans : Humans, thanks to a variety of distractions in their personal lives or the time they spend in their workplaces, do not allow them to maintain razor-sharp focus on their jobs for a long period of time. However, a robot does not face such limitations and can maintain a steady focus on the job it is doing for as long as required. This is important to maintain the accuracy of the job and minimize the risk of causing an accident by not focusing on the job properly. This is one of the reasons why companies are slowly transferring their mundane tasks to the robots.

Strong memory : Humans do not have a picture-perfect memory with complete recall capability of an earlier event. As time passes, a person begins to construct the memory in a way that makes it more familiar. Similarly, any memory of the event that may implicate the individual, he or she will always try to suppress. The robots, on the other hand, have no such issues with complete memory recall. An operator can simply go through the camera or audio feed to find out exactly what happened at a particular period of time.

Conclusion : If you are looking at acquiring robots for industrial applications or avail animatronic parts for sale, then contact us at 01 801 410 4869 or visit our website www.animatronicrobotics.com.

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