Lighten Up the Load with Robots

Robots with light weight can still per­form pow­er­ful tasks, and robots now have the capa­bil­i­ty to light­en humans’ loads in spe­cial circumstances.

5D Robot­ics is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the US Army, Seg­way, and DRS Tech­nolo­gies to devel­op robots that will help car­ry some of the gear load sol­diers need. The Army wants to pre­vent injuries caused when sol­diers’ loads are extreme­ly heavy. A lighter load to car­ry would also help stave off fatigue for the sol­diers. Since the robots can’t tire, they can car­ry hun­dreds of pounds of gear while remain­ing agile in com­plex terrain.

The third gen­er­a­tion of light­weight robot­ic arms is lighter and more pow­er­ful: the LWA 3. The appli­ca­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties are ver­sa­tile, and can be used for inspec­tion sys­tems, ser­vice robot­ics, human-machine-inter­ac­tion, and uti­liza­tion on mobile plat­forms. The com­bi­na­tion of high pow­er den­si­ty and light mate­ri­als for con­nect­ing tech­nol­o­gy allow the arm to car­ry twice the pay­load. The inter­con­nect­ed alu­minum struc­ture enables the weight optimization.

KUKA​’s light­weight robot, the LBR, was designed for the pur­pose of work­ing more close­ly with human oper­a­tors. The mod­u­lar light­weight robot is based on the human arm and pos­sess­es sev­en degrees of free­dom. This allows greater flex­i­bil­i­ty and ease of manip­u­la­tion com­pared with typ­i­cal indus­tri­al robots. It has inte­grat­ed sen­sors and inno­v­a­tive con­trol algo­rithms that enable it to yield to exter­nal forces.

The LBR has a sen­si­tive touch, feels its way towards objects, and allows itself to be gen­tly pushed away by humans. It allows itself to be guid­ed, and this is how it gath­ers infor­ma­tion and ​“learns.” Fur­ther, it can teach the human oper­a­tor com­plex motion sequences. While it only weighs 14 kg, it is still a pow­er­ful lifter. Its joints are con­nect­ed using CRP struc­tures, and it is fit­ted with light HD gear units and motors with a low pow­er-weight ratio. 

There are many types of light­weight robots avail­able at Robots​.com. We pro­vide robot­ics solu­tions from KUKA, Uni­ver­sal Robots, Motoman, Fanuc and ABB robots, each car­ry­ing robots of dif­fer­ent sizes and weights. Con­tact us today online or at 877−762−6881 for more information.