Fanuc Provides Tactile Intelligence With Force Control and Vision Technologies

Indus­tri­al robots now com­bine force sens­ing and robot­ic vision to cre­ate tac­tile intel­li­gence. These two tech­niques have been intro­duced into the indus­try to increase the proven effec­tive­ness of robots in man­u­fac­tur­ing. As we charge on in the automa­tion world, indus­tri­al robots are con­tin­u­al­ly receiv­ing upgrades and enhance­ments as tech­nol­o­gy is expo­nen­tial­ly improving. 

As a result, man­u­fac­tur­ing is becom­ing more sophis­ti­cat­ed by the day as robots are con­quer­ing more pre­cise, flaw­less, and effi­cient appli­ca­tions with these advance­ments. Man­u­fac­tur­ers are con­tin­u­ous­ly improv­ing these process­es, increas­ing the pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, all while achiev­ing low­er costs.

Fanuc’s Force Sensors

Fanuc’s force sen­sors enable an almost human-like sense of touch, giv­ing them the abil­i­ty to detect force and torque applied to the EOAT in all 6‑degrees of free­dom. They pro­vide crafts­man-like pre­ci­sion and enable robots with a sense of ​“feel” to help with the most demand­ing mechan­i­cal assem­bly or mate­r­i­al removal oper­a­tions, such as con­tour­ing, mea­sur­ing, or sand­ing. Addi­tion­al­ly, robot­ic sanders can per­form with­in 2% accu­ra­cy as the the direct mea­sure­ments of tol­er­ances can be set to cre­ate a con­sis­tent and repeat­able environment.

These force sen­sors tru­ly help improve prod­uct qual­i­ty and process integri­ty as they aid in the con­trol of veloc­i­ty and force when objects are fit, aligned, buffed, trimmed, or assem­bled. As men­tioned, they can detect force and moment (x, y, z, yaw, pitch, and roll) applied to it from exter­nal sources.

Appli­ca­tions that Ben­e­fit from Force Con­trol and Vision

There are a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions that work with the force con­trol sen­sors and vision by Fanuc. These are as fol­lows: pre­cise fit­ting of machine parts, gear teeth engage­ment, push under con­stant force and prod­uct life cycle tests (auto­mo­tive door oper­a­tion, switch­ing oper­a­tions, appli­ca­tions requir­ing con­stant force), align­ment of flat sur­face of one work­piece with a flat sur­face of anoth­er work­piece, grind­ing, or flex­i­ble part feeding. 

Force Sen­sor Options

The force sen­sor by Fanuc robot­ics is made up of a sen­sor head, sen­sor adapter, and sen­sor cable. There are two dif­fer­ent options for set-up of the force sen­sors: a Remote or Fix­ture-Mount­ed sen­sor and a Face­plate-Mount­ed sensor.

• The Face­plate Mount­ed sen­sor is mount­ed to the robot face­plate where the robot holds the sen­sor and presents it to the part.
• The Remote/­Fix­ture-Mount­ed sen­sor is mount­ed on a fix­ture or in a loca­tion away from the robot. The robot then holds the part and presents it to the Force Sen­sor. Mount­ing the sen­sor on anoth­er loca­tion also reduces the weight of the end effec­tor and enables the robot to car­ry dif­fer­ent tools. Addi­tion­al­ly, to help pro­vide solu­tions for a vari­ety of jobs and appli­ca­tions, there are five dif­fer­ent sen­sor sizes are suit­able for 6‑axis robots to sup­port pay­load class­es up to 250 kg (15, 40, 100 and 250 kg). In order to fur­ther enhance the force sens­ing, there are sev­er­al algo­rithms and intel­li­gent fea­tures avail­able, increas­ing the over­all performance. 
• Con­stant Push enables the robot to give a soft, con­stant push of force in one direc­tion for a spec­i­fied time.
• Face Match pro­vides the robot with the abil­i­ty to align and match the face of the work­piece held in the robot hand with the face of the object. This pro­vides uni­form align­ment between a robot held com­po­nent and con­tact sur­face of a sub-assembly.
• Shaft Insert/​Bearing, Insert/​Groove, Insert/​Square, Insert/​Clutch Insert allows loose fit­ting by align­ing the angle and posi­tion of a shaft with a hotel for the inser­tion of vary­ing shapes.
• Phase Match Insert per­forms phase match­ing of teeth, such as key shaft inser­tion and gear engage­ment, by rotat­ing and mesh­ing them before final insertion.
• Hole Search gives the robot the abil­i­ty search for a hole by mov­ing the shaft or object to be insert­ed at right angles to the hole, fol­low­ing by an insertion.
• Con­tour­ing Func­tion traces the sur­face of a work­piece while apply­ing a con­stant force with a tool such as a grinder. When sand­ing, grind­ing, and pol­ish­ing oper­a­tions are work­ing with uneven or irreg­u­lar sur­faces, this fea­ture mea­sures and is able to apply con­stant force to the tool and sur­face and fol­low the uneven sur­face even if it is dif­fer­ent than the orig­i­nal­ly taught line. If the work­piece to be machined is too heavy or large, then it will be secured onto a table and the grinder will be attached to the robot. If the work­piece is too small, the tool is secured onto a table and the robot holds the work­piece. Either case is per­formed while a set force is applied.
• TP Pro­gram Auto Gen­er­a­tion On is for process­es requir­ing accu­rate con­toured edges, this fea­ture records the path of the work­piece and auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ates a TP program.
• Two-Direc­tion Push On- enables the robot to push down and in at the same time.
• Search Func­tion is designed to help min­i­mize the posi­tion and ori­en­ta­tion error of the approach posi­tion pri­or to an inser­tion operation.

iRvi­sion with Force Control 

iRVi­sion is also inte­grat­ed to fur­ther enhance part loca­tion and eval­u­a­tion. Inter­grat­ed Robot Machine Vision is the inte­gra­tion of a cam­era inter­face built into the robot con­troller. Cam­eras can be attached to the robot or places in remote loca­tions. iRvi­sion is designed to elim­i­nate the need to place every work­piece in the same way, every time. It is a visu­al sen­sor sys­tem that can mea­sure the posi­tion of each work­piece by using the cam­eras and then adjust the robot motion to adjust the work­piece accordingly. 

iRVi­sion is a great addi­tion to any auto­mat­ed process. Some oth­er ben­e­fits include: han­dling mul­ti­ple parts at one time, reduc­ing the floor space, mak­ing part changeovers a breeze, iden­ti­fy­ing parts in mul­ti­ple ori­en­ta­tions, locat­ing parts in 2D or 3D, error proof­ing parts as they enter assem­bly, increas­ing through­put, and reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing fix­tur­ing costs.

Addi­tion­al Fea­tures Available 

In order to be sure all sen­sors are in good, work­ing con­di­tion, Fanuc has a built-in force sen­sor diag­no­sis that uses instruc­tions to ver­i­fy each force sen­sor. Also avail­able are sev­er­al soft­ware fea­tures that coor­di­nate with force sens­ing to deter­mine the force con­trol per­for­mance. The force sen­sor data dis­play in real time is a clear indi­ca­tor of the per­for­mance impact for force con­trol para­me­ters adjust­ment. This helps to reduce the over­all teach­ing time while also pro­vid­ing instan­ta­neous feed­back for pro­duc­tion runs, mak­ing issues easy to diagnose.

There is a ​“Teach Pen­dant Pro­gram Auto Gen­er­a­tion” to play back the mon­i­tored edges of the work­piece in the con­tour­ing process with force con­trol. This pro­gram is impor­tant to help keep speeds and the push force con­sis­tent when trav­el speeds are low or when the robot revers­es. This gen­er­ates an auto­mat­ed TP pro­gram with posi­tion­al infor­ma­tion with Fanuc iRVision’s Image to Points fea­ture. The iPen­dant user inter­face device enables the con­stant dis­play of actu­al force vari­a­tions dur­ing the force con­trol operation.

ROBOGU­IDE, Fanuc Robot­ics’ off-line pro­gram­ming soft­ware, can help in the devel­op­ment of your appli­ca­tion as it uses 3D mod­els of actu­al tool­ing, robots, and work­cell parts to help prove every­thing accu­rate and save mon­ey and time.

Robots Rec­om­mend­ed for Force Control

The major­i­ty of force sen­sors have an IP67 rat­ing and can be used on a vari­ety of robot mod­els such as the LR Mate 200iC, M‑10iA, M‑20iA, M‑710iC, and R‑2000iB.

Get Fanuc Force Sen­sors and iRvi­sion, today!

It is easy to see why force sen­sors and iRVi­sion are now imper­a­tive on the pro­duc­tion line. Whether it be for assem­bly or sand­ing, the com­bi­na­tion will pro­vide an increase in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and high pre­ci­sion. Equal­ly ben­e­fi­cial are the facts that there is com­plete inte­gra­tion into the robot for faster pro­cess­ing, the sup­port of prac­tice-proven stan­dard func­tions, and robust hard­ware and intel­li­gent soft­ware for reduced cycle times. Addi­tion­al­ly, the setups are fast and easy, thanks to easy inte­gra­tion and few­er parts to help main­tain max­i­mum up-time. 

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Robots​.com rep­re­sen­ta­tives today online or at 877−762−6881.