English
Created on 09.11
Key technology and application of industrial robot
1. Key Technologies in Robot Body Design
(1) Transmission Structure Design
Develop the overall design scheme, determine the structural configuration of the robot, and carry out preliminary transmission structure design, component structure design, and 3D modeling. Designers are required to have in-depth knowledge of common robot structural configurations, standard transmission principles and mechanisms, as well as the types and characteristics of reducers. Strong structural design capability and hands-on experience are essential.
(2) Reducer Selection
Engineers must have a thorough understanding of reducer types and performance parameters, and be capable of selecting, calculating, and verifying the appropriate reducer. Testing and validation of reducers is also required, covering key parameters including noise, vibration, output torque, torsional stiffness, backlash, repeat positioning accuracy, and absolute positioning accuracy.
Vibration from the reducer directly causes end-effector jitter and reduces the robot's trajectory accuracy. Among the many causes of reducer vibration, resonance is one of the most common issues. Robot manufacturers must master proven methods to suppress or avoid resonance.
(3) Motor Selection
Engineers must have a comprehensive understanding of motor operating characteristics and be capable of calculating and verifying motor torque, power, and inertia matching.
(4) Simulation Analysis
Conduct static and dynamic simulation analysis to verify the selection of motors and reducers, check the strength and stiffness of body components, reduce overall weight, improve operational efficiency, and lower manufacturing costs. Modal analysis of the 3D model and natural frequency calculation are essential for identifying and suppressing resonance.
(5) Reliability Design
- The structural design follows the simplest viable design principle;
- Body iron castings use ductile cast iron for its excellent comprehensive mechanical properties; aluminum castings use high-fluidity casting alloys produced via permanent mold casting;
- Detailed assembly process instructions are provided, and component-level and single-axis tests are conducted during assembly;
- After full assembly, complete machine performance testing and endurance testing are carried out;
- The protection rating of the entire machine is optimized, and the anti-interference capability of the electrical cabinet is enhanced to ensure reliable operation across diverse working environments.
2. Key Technologies in Motor & Servo Systems
(1) Motor Design
① Lightweight Design
For robotic applications, motor size and weight are extremely sensitive parameters. A key technology is to improve servo motor efficiency and reduce size and weight through research into high-performance magnetic materials, integrated optimization design, and advanced processing and assembly techniques.
② High-Speed Capability
When the reduction ratio cannot be significantly adjusted, the motor's maximum speed directly determines the end-effector speed and working cycle time of the robot. Additionally, an insufficient speed ratio negatively affects inertia matching. Therefore, increasing the motor's maximum speed is a critical technology for robot motors.
③ Direct Drive & Hollow Shaft Design
With the growing maturity and adoption of collaborative robots, the demand for lightweight and compact robot structures continues to rise. The development of specialized robot motors — such as high-torque direct drive motors and disc-type hollow shaft motors — represents a key trend for the future.
(2) Servo Drive Technology
① Fast Response & Precise Positioning
The servo response time directly affects the robot's rapid start-stop performance, which in turn determines overall working efficiency and cycle time.
② Sensorless Elastic Collision Detection
Safety is a critical performance indicator for robots. Adding force or torque sensors increases structural complexity and cost. Sensorless elastic collision technology, based on the current coupling relationship between the encoder and motor, can enhance robot safety without modifying the body structure or increasing cost.
③ Integrated Drive & Control
Multi-axis drive integration technology — featuring multi-core CPUs and combined drive-control architecture — improves system performance while reducing drive volume and cost.
④ Online Adaptive Chatter Suppression
The cantilever structure of industrial robots is prone to chatter during multi-axis coordinated motion, heavy-load operations, and rapid start-stop cycles. The robot body stiffness must be matched to the motor's servo stiffness parameters — excessive stiffness causes vibration, while insufficient stiffness results in sluggish start-stop response. Since robot stiffness varies across different positions, postures, and tooling loads, a fixed pre-set servo stiffness value cannot satisfy all working conditions.
Online adaptive chatter suppression technology provides an intelligent control strategy that requires no manual parameter tuning, balancing stiffness matching and chatter suppression to effectively reduce end-effector jitter and improve positioning accuracy.
3. Key Control Technologies
(1) Motion Solving & Trajectory Planning
Advanced motion solving and optimal path planning algorithms significantly improve the robot's motion accuracy and working efficiency.
(2) Dynamic Compensation
General-purpose industrial robots feature a serial cantilever structure with relatively low rigidity, complex motion patterns, and a tendency to deform and vibrate during operation. Improving dynamic performance and motion accuracy requires the control system to establish a dynamic model for real-time compensation, including:
- Gravity compensation
- Inertia compensation
- Friction compensation
- Coupling compensation
(3) Calibration Compensation
Due to machining tolerances and assembly errors, the actual robot inevitably deviates from the theoretical mathematical model, reducing both TCP accuracy and trajectory accuracy. This is particularly critical in applications such as welding and offline programming. The solution involves detecting and calibrating the robot's model parameters to restore precision.
(4) Comprehensive Process Packages
The control system must be closely aligned with real-world engineering applications. Beyond continuous system upgrades and feature expansion, it is essential to develop and refine application-specific process packages based on industrial needs. This approach helps accumulate industrial process expertise, making operation more convenient for customers, simpler to execute, and more efficient in production.
4. Key Application Scenarios
(1) Palletizing
In factories across various industries, highly automated palletizing robots are widely deployed. Manual palletizing is labor-intensive and physically demanding — workers face significant physical strain while achieving relatively low efficiency. Based on the characteristics of the objects being transported and their designated classification points, the palletizing robot can perform efficient, categorized handling while maintaining the shape and integrity of the products. This enables packing equipment to complete stacking tasks at rates of hundreds of units per hour, playing a vital role in production line unloading and container handling operations.
(2) Welding
Welding robots primarily perform automated welding tasks. Different industries have varying welding requirements, leading to the development of specialized welding robots including spot welding robots, arc welding robots, and laser welding robots. The automotive manufacturing industry is the largest and most widespread user of welding robots, where these machines offer unmatched advantages in welding difficulty, welding volume, and welding quality consistency.
(3) Assembly
In industrial production, component assembly is a massive undertaking that traditionally requires significant labor. Manual assembly has been gradually replaced by industrial robots due to its high error rate and low efficiency. Assembly robot development integrates multiple technologies, including communication technology, automatic control, optical principles, and microelectronics. Engineers program the robot according to the specific assembly process and apply it to the designated assembly tasks. The defining features of assembly robots are high installation accuracy, exceptional flexibility, and long service life. Given the complexity and precision required in assembly work, these robots are especially well-suited for electronic component assembly and precision automotive parts installation.
(4) Inspection & Detection
Robots equipped with multi-dimensional sensing capabilities can replace human workers in specialized and hazardous roles. Applications include:
- High-risk area inspection — nuclear contaminated zones, toxic environments, and unknown hazardous areas;
- Inaccessible location detection — internal inspection of patient anatomy in medical settings, industrial defect detection, and search-and-rescue operations at disaster sites such as earthquake zones.
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