Pick and Place robots (ARS system)Jntuh notes

Pick and Place robots

What is a pick and place robot?

A pick and place robot is the one that is used to pick up an object and arrange it in the desired section. It can be a cylindrical robot implementing movement in horizontal, vertical, and rotational axes, around robot providing two rotational and one linear movement, an articulated robot, or a scara robot (fixed robots with the 3 vertical axes rotary arms present).

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Pick and place robotic arm is a practice in which it can be designed in many diverse ways according to its applicability. Further, they massively depend on joints, which are used to join the two following rigid bodies in the robot and can be rotary joint or linear joint. Joints usually define the movement of the arm as they define the degree of freedom of the sections. Consequently, all robotic arm consists of the subsequent fundamental components.

Components of Pick and place robots

Controller

As the name implies, this is the brain that drives the arm. It keeps track of time, the position of the joints, and the progress of the manipulator. The control unit can be moreover categorized as mechanical, hydraulic, or electrical.

• Mechanical: It is the most basic and least complex type. For this reason, it has been in use from the times when programmable devices did not exist. The idea of robot arm control was to manage the dynamic reply of the operator as per the pre-specified target through mechanical linkage and cam.

• Hydraulic type system: Pascal’s law is the principle of hydraulic drive methods and utilizes pistons and valves to command the movement. This type of controller is used for robots that require to move bulky or heavy quantities because such loads rarely need to be installed with absolute accuracy, e.g. stacking might be a task included in this group.

• Electrical: This type of control is comfortable, reliable, quiet, sensibly fast, and used on almost all assembly robots that demand close sensitivity efficiency. Therefore this system is most popularly used today. Programmable controller microcomputer variety, micro process-based, and minicomputer based controllers are customized to store instructions to carry out executions.

Manipulator

The manipulator is the whole mechanism of the robot that assists the movement of any degree of freedom. The bridges to this robotic manipulator are the movable components, which enables comparative movement between the adjoining links. Additionally, they consist of a base, arm, and gripper.

Grippers

The gripper is relevant to the human hand. Just as the hand grasps the tool or machine to perform the work, likewise the gripper defends the robot’s workpiece while the action is being performed. As the grip stability and nature vary concerning targets being gripped, therefore the shape of the gripper is determined by the task it has to perform.

Sensors

They are used to sense the primary as well as the outer state to make sure the robot operates smoothly as a whole. Furthermore, they help in making them more controlled and computerized. Sensors involve touch sensors, IR sensors, etc.

Source of Power and Drives

Power sources are essential while designing robotic systems. Hence, the adoption of power sources should be the primary focus owing to its result on the mechanism, packaging, weight, and size of the system. There are three types of origins of power devices for robotic systems. These are pneumatic; hydraulic or electro-hydraulic; and electric source.

Working Example of Controlling a Pick N Place Robot

How about commanding the robot with just a few buttons on the keypad? Yes, it is possible! Just pressing the requisite button, we can transmit the command to the robot to make it move in any direction to complete our task. Moreover, this can be achieved using simple wireless communication.

Let’s see how this works:

The transmitter part consists of the keypad interfaced with the microcontroller. Any button number in decimal form is converted to 4 digit binary by the microcontroller and the identical output at one of its port is employed to the encoder. The encoder converts this parallel data to serial data and then, this is fed to the transmitter, furnished with an antenna to broadcast the serial data.

The receiver side consists of a decoder interfaced with the microcontroller. The decoder transforms the received command in serial composition to the parallel form and gives this data to the microcontroller. Based on this command the microcontroller sends the appropriate input signals to the motor drivers to drive the particular motors.

The arrangement consists of two motors for granting the motion to the whole robot and two other motors to provide the arm motion. The end effector or the gripper requires to be controlled to apply proper pressure on the object to control it effectively, to give it a soft grip.

This is guaranteed by controlling the arm motors through proper supervision. The output from the arm motors is attached to a 10Ohms/2W resistor and at the time of motor overload or secured condition, a high voltage is developed across the resistor, which causes a logic huge level at the output of the optoisolator and the interrupt pin of the microcontroller attached to the optoisolator output through a PNP transistor gets the logic low signal, which halts all other services of the gripper.

Thus through simplistic RF communication, we can control a pick and place robot.

Applications of pick and place robot

Applications of pick and place robotic arm (application of robot) is extensive and diverse. They are used from industries to hospitals and can be potentially used from restaurants to battlefields.

Industrial application

It is hard to imagine today’s manufacturing plants to function without them. As a result, this is the most fundamental application of pick and place robotic arm. Their specific tasks include:

• Fast Assembly – robots can pick parts from the incoming conveyor and assemble them onto workpieces carried by an outgoing conveyor with high precision.

• Inspection and Quality Control – The robot visually inspects and picks out defective products moving on a fast conveyor.

• Fast Packaging – vision spots products spread out on moving conveyors and then the robot transfers them into packaging containers at high speed.

• Fast Sorting– robot instantaneously picks and separates different types of parts passing through its vision domain.

Defense application

To reduce the risk of human life in battlefields is a major area of concern and research. Pick and place robotic arms seem to be perfect for performing tasks such as picking up harmful objects like bombs and diffusing them safely. Further, they can be also used for surveillance.

Restaurants

Automated restaurants serving freshly cooked food are the new cool spots in the west. Pick and place robotic arm are used here as a cook, performing tasks such as chopping and mixing ingredients. As a result, the process becomes more efficient leading to more profits and less wastage.

Medical applications

these robots can be used in various surgical operations like in joint replacement operations, orthopedic, and internal surgery operations. They perform operations with more precision and accuracy.

Robotic arm projects

• Gesture controlled robotic arm
• Voice-controlled robotic arm
• Pick N Place Robotic Arm And Movement Controlled by Android
• Remote Controlled Pick & Place Robotic Vehicle
• Color sensing robotic arm for sorting objects
• The hydraulic powered robotic arm
• Bionic hand prosthesis model
• Scribing /writing robotic arm
• Coffee brewing robot
• Welding robotic arm