China 's robot industry faces the challenge of dual - arm robot as the direction of development

The double-arm robots are smart and accessible, which is a major breakthrough in robotics. China as a robot application power, must have independent arms of the robot brand, to break the monopoly of foreign robots on the market, this will be the next decade we face a huge challenge, but also must achieve the goal.

At present, with the industrial, medical, service level requirements continue to increase, we urgently hope that the robot can be more like a man, and can and people "fight side by side." In this vision prompted, the two-arm robot was born. Compared to single-arm robots, the two-arm collaboration robot more dexterous, and can contact with people, this is undoubtedly a major breakthrough in robot technology. China as a robot application power, must have independent arms of the robot brand, to break the monopoly of foreign robots on the market, this will be the next decade we face a huge challenge, but also must achieve the goal.

What are the advantages of man-machine collaboration robot? It can play a person's strengths and machine expertise. Machines can tirelessly carry out physical operations, logical reasoning and thinking, people can in a complex, unknown environment to make judgments and decisions. Collaboration is reflected in the interaction of information, through the physical contact of people and machines, but also through the man-machine interface. What is the basic operation of this man-machine cooperative robot?

The first is the operation of the arms; the second is the person can guide the machine to operate; the third is to take into account the safety of people and machines, because it is in the same narrow environment to work together, and the fourth is the contact we look forward to. Between the robot and the environment, between the two arms of the robot, and between the robot and the human being.

Among them, the fourth operation than the general industrial robots are much more complex, so we should from the system requirements, operation, hardware, control and software to conduct a comprehensive design.

Robot theory to commercialization

Robot theory and practice of the outbreak began from the eighties, including inverse kinematics and dynamics of control methods, stability theory, force control and machine vision, these technologies successfully applied to the space above the robot. We made a smart arm and launched into orbit in 2008, and now it is the only air track above the operation of a smart arm, but also the arms of the robot, mainly in the International Space Station to do contact operations. The robot is very successful in the application of force control means, the delay for nearly four seconds. It completed all the replacement parts required by the International Space Station and, for the first time in 2013, added 1.3 liters of fuel to the satellites. Filling fuel is a dream in the world to complete one thing, the Government of Canada in 2013 notes on the dexterous robots as a background pattern, which illustrates the importance of smart robots.

From 2010 onwards, our team to space robot technology applied to the medical above. The first thing we do is use eight joints of the robot in the Toronto Children's Hospital to do small trauma surgery, which is the world's first successful implementation of the camera in the human abdominal movement, guide the doctor to find the wound surface surgery. The second thing is to use the NeuroArm II dual-arm robot under the conditions of nuclear magnetic resonance, the surgeon on the patient's brain surgery. These two projects which use a fully adaptive dynamic compensation control methods, so that the accuracy of the robot has been greatly improved.

Since the 1990s, the new development is mainly concentrated in the hardware and communication, which makes the robot with better technical conditions, collaborative robot commercialization, which will human life, industry have a great impact. We can predict that this will be the same as the past Cell Phone and the Internet have a significant impact on human beings.

People led and guided

Peking University Intelligent Mechanical Systems Laboratory in the past more than a year to develop a robot product "WEE". "WEE" is a double-arm robot, which is composed of two arms, each arm can be operated independently, and each arm consists of seven joints, the robot can have a five-kilogram load. People and robots can coexist in the same environment, the user through the interface to select the mode of operation he needs. The robot is modular, which is modular in the machine, electrically modular, and modular in control, so it can be extended to twenty joints without the need for a system Do the re-design.

WEE

What kind of performance is required by the designer? This operation is divided into three areas: green, yellow and orange. A green area is a generic robot, which is free to move. Yellow area that has been close to people, this time we should be careful that it will hurt people's problems. Orange area is the contact area, the regional machine and the human contact, and it needs to complete the task to operate.

We do this thing is to rely on joint control and task control such damping control, such damping is in accordance with the requirements of different regions to adjust, and we have a seamless convergence is at the end of the robot from different regions mobile. We also want the end damping and rigidity of the robot to be completely even, in other words, in which direction the robot tip moves in the direction of pushing it in its end. The force we want the robot to touch is very small. If the manipulator is advanced at a speed of two centimeters per second, this speed is sufficient for the contacting operation. The force we detect will not be greater than five Newtons, which is much higher than the average man-machine collaboration robot achieves, even more than an order of magnitude higher. The robot is intended to prevent possible contact and collision between the person and the robot arm. Double-arm operation is like a person, arms are not independent of the operation, if the right arm to operate, the left arm can be in accordance with the operation of the right arm to help do. We hope that both the arms or the arms should be guided and led by the people.

I also hope that the dual-arm robot to have what performance? Its intensity should be small, the stiffness to be even. Then it can not achieve the most extreme position? That is, the performance reaches a critical point. Our double-arm robots do this by minimizing the effort and achieving a full-duplex. The theory should have an indicator of the dexterity of the collaborative robot, and this indicator is different from the conventional dexterity of the conventional manipulator.

Our control is a combination of time trajectory and state trajectory, one arm with the other arm action control method. We want to maximize the bandwidth of the closed-loop system to maximize the use of the user to guide the arm and arms of the operation, the two arm coordination between the mechanical and human co-operation. The focal point has been changed from one end of a manipulator to the end of two manipulators, allowing the manipulator to contact the human hand, in addition to unpredictable human and robot contact.

WEE Control is the role of force at the end of the robot, the introduction of the arm movement, it must meet two conditions: first, the arm should be very soft; Arm damping is completely even. These two points, we have done.

All - round Application of Man - machine Cooperative

So, what is the application of this robot system? We went to Shenzhen and other places to do a very close investigation, when I saw these applications very emotionally, because our robot application is really only in a large area which used the A small corner, so many applications can be used robots, especially man-machine collaboration robot to do.

We know a company called Wave, they are doing filter, is to adjust the height of the bolt, making it the output frequency to meet certain needs. Well, now is generally how to do it? Is the two hands of workers in tune. The labor intensity is very high, and the wages of workers must pay a very high people will come. So, we use a double-arm robot instead of such a test line, the introduction of intelligent, do not need to look at the screen, and can rely on the system to determine how the robot should adjust the height of the bolt. There is a key, the first bolt height of a good tune, and then moved to the back of a few bolts when the frequency of the first bolt is wrong, for the robot once again on it, I hope that through this Of the introduction of intelligent robots can give the Shenzhen 3C production line to bring more improvements.

The next decade

There are also many applications of robots that are not actually known, and only the arms of the robot can handle such flexible loads. In other words, a piece of cloth, a piece of cloth, and a piece of arm can do. It is easy. The other is the modular structure, we can do 20 joints of the snake-like robot, because the robot is a great redundancy, even to the robot body of an external force, the front of the six degrees of freedom can be Remain completely unchanged. Our control technology can be used to improve the bottleneck of traditional robotics, such as welding robot jitter, if the model compensates for the acceleration, these problems can be solved. Our next dream is to quickly make WEE more lightweight, and do direct contact with people.

Now the service robot application or language and entertainment, if we do direct contact, then the intensity control will be accumulated under the technical capacity. WEE will be a good platform, especially when it as a medical robot, its accuracy and dexterity can be more arm to show, so we want to launch China's own property brand, to resist the Chinese robot The market is completely occupied by foreign brands, this will be the next ten years time is very important thing.