The Use Of Robots In The Manufactoring Industry
Mankind has always strived to give life like qualities to its artifacts in an attempt to find substitutes for himself to carry out his orders and also to work in a hostile environment. The popular concept of a robot is of a machine that looks and works like a human being.
The industry is moving from current state of automation to Robotization, to increase productivity and to deliver uniform quality. The industrial robots of today may not look the least bit like a human being although all the research is directed to provide more and more anthropomorphic and humanlike features and super-human capabilities in these.
One type of robot commonly used in industry is a robotic manipulator or simply a robotic arm. It is an open or closed kinematic chain of rigid links interconnected by movable joints. In some configurations, links can be considered to correspond to human anatomy as waist, upper arm and forearm with joint at shoulder and elbow. At end of arm a wrist joint connects an end effector which may be a tool and its fixture or a gripper or any other device to work.
Robotics is the branch of engineering science & Technology related to robots, and their design, manufacture, application, and structural disposition. Robotics is related to electronics, mechanics, and Robotics research today is focused on developing systems that exhibit modularity, flexibility, redundancy, fault-tolerance, a general and extensible software environment and seamless connectivity to other machines, some researchers focus on completely automating a manufacturing process or a task, by providing sensor based intelligence to the robot arm, while others try to solidify the analytical foundations on which many of the basic concepts in robotics are built.
In this highly developing society time and man power are critical constrains for completion of task in large scales. The automation is playing important role to save human efforts in most of the regular and frequently carried works. One of the major and most commonly performed works is picking and placing of jobs from source to destination.
Present day industry is increasingly turning towards computer-based automation mainly due to the need for increased productivity and delivery of end products with uniform quality. The inflexibility and generally high cost of hard-automation systems, which have been used for automated manufacturing tasks in the past, have led to a broad based interest in the use of robots capable of performing a variety of manufacturing functions in a flexible environment and at lower costs. The use of Industrial Robots characterizes some of contemporary trends in automation of the manufacturing process. However, present day industrial robots also exhibit a monolithic mechanical structure and closed-system software architecture. They are concentrated on simple repetitive tasks, which tend not to require high precision.
First of all, you must know which application will be performed by the robot. This criteria will initially guide you when choosing which kind of robot you need to buy. If you are looking for a compact pick and place robot, you may want to choose a Scara robot. If you are looking more at placing small objects at a fast rate, a Delta robot will suit you best. If your application needs to be done alongside human workers, a collaborative robot should be your robot of choice.
