Experimental development of lightweight manipulators with improved design cycle time that leverages off-the-shelf robotic arm components

The growing market for lightweight robots inspires new use-cases, such as collaborative manipulators for human-centered automation. However, widespread adoption faces obstacles due to high R&D costs and longer design cycles, although rapid advances in mechatronic engineering have effectively nar...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2024-07, Vol.19 (7), p.e0305379
Main Authors: Abbas, Muhammad Rzi, Ahsan, Muhammad, Iqbal, Jamshed
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Actuators
Automation
Collaboration
Cycle time
Degrees of freedom
Design
Design for assembly
Design for manufacturability
Design improvements
Engineering and Technology
Equipment Design
Fabrication
Humans
Industrial design
International economic relations
Libraries
Lightweight
Manipulators
Manufacturing
Physical Sciences
Product development
Prototypes
R&D
Real time
Research & development
Research and Analysis Methods
Robot arms
Robot components
Robotics
Robotics - instrumentation
Robotics industry
Robots
Simulation
Software
Virtual prototyping
Weight reduction
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Summary:The growing market for lightweight robots inspires new use-cases, such as collaborative manipulators for human-centered automation. However, widespread adoption faces obstacles due to high R&D costs and longer design cycles, although rapid advances in mechatronic engineering have effectively narrowed the design space to affordable robot components, turning the development of lightweight robots into a component selection and integration challenge. Recognizing this transformation, we demonstrate a practical framework for designing lightweight industrial manipulators using a case-study of indigenously developed 5 Degrees-of-Freedom (DOF) cobot prototype. Our framework incorporates off-the-shelf sensors, actuators, gears, and links for Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA), along with complete virtual prototyping. The design cycle time is reduced by approximately 40% at the cost of cobot real-time performance deviating within 2.5% of the target metric. Our physical prototype, having repeatability of 0.05mm calculated as per the procedure defined in ISO 9283:1998, validates the cost-effective nature of the framework for creating lightweight manipulators, benefiting robotic startups, R&D organizations, and educational institutes without access to expensive in-house fabrication setups.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0305379