Different Robot Varieties

The scope of tasks robots can per­form is expand­ing rapid­ly each year. With­in the past few decades, robots have replaced man­u­al work­ers in many process­es that were haz­ardous, tedious, or tir­ing for humans. Automa­tion can enhance a manufacturer’s pre­ci­sion, speed, and effi­cien­cy com­pared to man­u­al labor.

Indus­tri­al robots are ide­al for repet­i­tive or dan­ger­ous tasks, like lift­ing heavy objects, han­dling chem­i­cals, paint­ing, and per­form­ing assem­bly work. They are found in auto­mo­bile and man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­tries. The first type of indus­tri­al robot is the Cartesian/​Gantry robot. It is equipped with an arm with three joints, coin­ci­dent with a Carte­sian coor­di­na­tor, and is used for pick and place work, sealant appli­ca­tion, machine han­dling, and weld­ing. A cylin­dri­cal robot can han­dle die cast­ing oper­a­tions and oth­er assem­bly oper­a­tions. A spher­i­cal robot spe­cial­izes in weld­ing. SCARA robots are ide­al for pick and place work due to their par­al­lel rotary joints that pro­vide com­pli­ance. Artic­u­lat­ed robots have at least three rotary joints, and are use­ful for spray paint­ing. Par­al­lel robots have arms with con­cur­rent pris­mat­ic or rotary joints. 

Robots are also used in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor. Farm­ers dri­ve their trac­tors over their ground repet­i­tive­ly dur­ing the year, and their land becomes gen­tle. Deme­ter, a robot agri­cul­tur­al har­vester, is the epit­o­me of com­mer­cial mobile robot­ic tech­nol­o­gy. This robot con­tains con­trollers, posi­tion­ers, safe­guards, and task soft­ware specif­i­cal­ly designed for the needs of com­mer­cial agriculture. 

The mil­i­tary uses robots to inves­ti­gate dan­ger­ous or haz­ardous envi­ron­ments. The Pio­neer robot is a remote recon­nais­sance sys­tem for struc­tur­al analy­sis of build­ings. A tele­op­er­at­ed mobile robot can deploy sen­sors, a map­per cre­ates real­is­tic 3D mod­els of a build­ing inte­ri­or, and a core­bor­er cuts and retrieves sam­ples of struc­tur­al mate­ri­als. Oth­er envi­ron­men­tal sen­sors are also impor­tant. Anoth­er robot, the Dante II, is also used for haz­ardous ter­rain. It rap­pelled down an Alaskan vol­cano, and walked over the rough ter­rain to deter­mine how much car­bon diox­ide, hydro­gen sul­fide, and sul­fur diox­ide exist in the gas in the crater. The Dante sent back this infor­ma­tion via satel­lite, and saved humans from hav­ing to enter this crater.

Project Jere­my is a col­lab­o­ra­tive project between NASA and San­ta Clara Uni­ver­si­ty: it is a robot­ic under­wa­ter rover used to gath­er infor­ma­tion about marine life. Using robots in freez­ing water like the Arc­tic Ocean enables humans to gain impor­tant infor­ma­tion that might not oth­er­wise be recovered.

Of course, robots are of major impor­tance to the aero­space indus­try. A Remote­ly Oper­at­ed Vehi­cle is an unmanned space­craft that can hov­er in flight, or land and make con­tact with an extrater­res­tri­al body, or it can be a rover that moves over ter­rain after land­ing. The Sojourn­er rover is one of the best-known ROVs. 

As you can see, there are many vari­eties of robots avail­able. Robots​.com is a cer­ti­fied indus­tri­al robot inte­gra­tor that helps com­pa­nies incor­po­rate oper­a­tion into their shopfloors. To find out more about what robots we offer con­tact us online or 877−762−6881 or search our site for more infor­ma­tion.