The importance of measuring external loads for robots

One of the newest safe­ty stan­dards recent­ly intro­duced by the IEC is the abil­i­ty for robots and humans to inter­act in clos­er prox­im­i­ty. This makes the abil­i­ty for robots to accu­rate­ly mea­sure their exter­nal loads more impor­tant than ever before. By being able to accu­rate­ly mea­sure the exter­nal loads being car­ried, robots are able to more pre­cise­ly sense the force need­ed for those loads.

Robots, includ­ing those robots that are made for work­ing hand in hand with human work­ers, have been out­fit with torque and force sen­sors that help robots to mea­sure the pres­sure and force nec­es­sary for mov­ing the exter­nal load they are car­ry­ing. This not only helps to make the robots move­ments more pre­dictable, but it also means that robots are more accu­rate­ly and effi­cient­ly work­ing for man­u­fac­tur­ers, which improves the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for line over­all. The accu­rate mea­sure­ment of robot­ic exter­nal loads also improves the ver­sa­til­i­ty of the sys­tem, allow­ing it to adapt to many dif­fer­ent load shapes, sizes and tolerances.

Along with torque and force sen­sors to improve move­ment and force pre­dictabil­i­ty when mov­ing exter­nal loads for robots, these sys­tems also have touch sen­sors for exter­nal loads and move­ments, which allows them oper­ate more safe­ly in their space. Touch sen­sors allow a robot car­ry­ing a load exter­nal­ly to stop if some­thing comes into its motion path. This rais­es the safe­ty lev­el in a shop because a robot that is mov­ing at 100 per­cent oper­a­tion can move with enough force to kill a human work­er that moves into its work­space. Touch sen­sors, along with prop­er safe­ty train­ing for work­ers, can help min­i­mize this type of injury.

Are you look­ing for a robot to car­ry exter­nal loads on your pro­duc­tion line? If so, you should con­tact Robots​.com. Robots​.com pro­vides solu­tions from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent robot com­pa­nies, includ­ing Fanuc, Motoman, ABB, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA. Our staff will work with you to build the right robot sys­tem with all the right sen­sors and oth­er fea­tures need­ed to auto­mate your appli­ca­tions to your exact specifications.

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