Redundant modular robot

Details Redundant modular robot Redundant modular robot

1989-08-16

1992-04-07

MacDonald, Allen R.

Robots

Counterbalance

901 14, B25J 1806, B25J 906, B25J 922, B25J 1904

Patent

active

051034034

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to a redundant robot of the modular type, permitting the displacement of a terminal from an initial position to a final position.
Numerous robots have been conceived for automating the tasks in one industrial process or another, or for intervening in an environment inaccessible to man.
The oldest robots, termed industrial robots, have a mechanical architecture constituted by bodies or links connected between them in such a manner as to permit a rotation or a translation of one link with respect to other neighboring links. The links are generally different from each other in order to specialize the robot to a given type of task. The primary deficiency of these robots resides in their mechanical complexity and costliness, and in their very high mass with respect to the useful load able to be displaced, and this essentially for the reason of the working conditions in the flexure and torsion of the elements constituting these robots. Moreover, these robots are not redundant and are therefor incapable of functioning correctly in the case of one or several mobilities.
The robots known as redundant robots, have been conceived more recently for intervening in cumbersome or quasi-closed environments. By "redundant robot" is meant a robot having superabundant numbers of mobilities with respect to the number of mobilities necessary and sufficient to position and orient a terminal in space. Their mobilities in redundant numbers permit assuring a positioning and an orientation of the terminal in several different manners, such that these robots benefit from a flexibility of use which is much greater than before.
The following patents or documents illustrate existing robots:
French patent 2,494,618 describes a robot of the elephant trunk type with deformation in a plane (deficiency: access to very limited space).
International Patent 84/04722 describing an articulated robot the links of which are individually controlled by cable systems (deficiency: partial or total breakdown of the robot in the case of cable breakage).
French patent 2,378,612 describing a polyarticulated arm with spatial displacement controllable by cables from the bottom (deficiency: accessible space is relatively limited).
European patent 0,017,016 describing a flexible arm with spatial displacement controllable by cables (deficiency: non-controllable robot in case of failure of a transmission).
French patent 2,339,470 describing a flexible arm with spatial links permitting rotations in all directions (deficiency: relatively limited space access).
Eurpoean patents 0,108,549; 0,085,307 and 0,077,609 describing arms with multiple rotations, able to be displaced in crowded space (deficiency: very limited supported load).
Soviet Engineering Research, Vol 2, No. 12, December, 1982, pages 75-78, Melton Mowbrav, A.SH. Kolistor "Development and Investigation of Industrial Robots Based on Specification by 1-coordinates", disclosing a robot with 6 jacks in stages.
The mechanical structure described in the last article mentioned above seems to possess remarkable potentialities, but difficult problems of control, not heretofor resolved, preventing in fact the exploitation of these potentialities. Effectively, if in a single stage system, there is a simple geometric relation giving the length of the six jacks as a function of the terminal position, this is no longer the case in a system where several stages are combined. There is no longer the simple relation permitting, starting from a final desired position, deducing the lengths of the jacks and the article mentioned above does not furnish any teaching for operating the effective control of such a robot.
The present invention proposes to furnish an improved robot of the redundant type described above, provided with a control permitting the exploitation of all the potentials.
By "robot" is meant an articulated mechanical system constituted by a connection of at least two stages, with which is associated a control unit. In the following description, in a general manner the conventional vocab

REFERENCES:
patent: 4964062 (1990-10-01), Ubhayakar

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