Mobile Robot Balancer for Heavy Payload Handling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current industrial robots have limited payload capacity, typically below 10 kg, making it difficult to handle components with higher dead weight, and their design focuses on being lightweight and energy-efficient to maintain mobility in environments with people, limiting their operational range and versatility.
Innovation Solution
A robot-integrated workstation combining a mobile robot with a hoist or balancer that can balance weight forces, allowing the robot to handle heavier components by expanding its working area through an autonomously drivable platform and a hoist with driven joints, optical sensors, and a robot controller that compensates for weight forces and inertia, enabling the robot to operate in a larger range than its mechanical reach.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the robot is designed to be lightweight and mobile, then ease of operation and energy efficiency are improved, but the payload capacity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs a balancer device that generates counterbalancing forces to offset the weight of components being handled. This allows the lightweight mobile robot to effectively handle heavier loads by compensating for gravity's effect, thus resolving the contradiction between maintaining light weight for mobility and increasing payload capacity.
2Device complexity
If the robot arm length is limited, then device complexity and energy consumption are reduced, but the working area deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces vertical movement capability through the balancer device, allowing the robot to access components from above by lowering the balancer. This adds a vertical dimension to the working area, expanding the robot's operational scope without requiring a longer horizontal arm structure.
3Weight of moving object
If the robot payload capacity is increased, then the ability to handle heavier components is improved, but the robot size and energy consumption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The balancer device actively compensates for the weight of handled components, allowing the robot to manage heavier loads without proportionally increasing its own mass or energy consumption. The balancer bears the gravitational burden, enabling the robot to effectively handle heavier components while maintaining energy efficiency.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution enhances the carrying capacity and operational range of mobile robots, allowing them to handle heavier loads and adapt to various logistics applications, while also ensuring safety through human-robot cooperation and vision-based collision monitoring, and provides a cost-effective and flexible solution for expanding the robot's working area.
Implementation Method 1
a hoist (2) with a device for balancing weight forces of a component (15) that can be carried by a holder (14) of the hoist
Implementation Method 2
The hoist (2) can have at least one optical sensor (27, 28), in particular a camera, which is set up to detect the environment
Data Source
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3~5
AI summary
The workstation (1) has a lifting bar (2) provided with a device for balancing weight forces of a component (15) in a position within a workspace of the lifting bar, where the lifting bar has a holder (14) for carrying the component. An autonomous mobile platform (3) has a robot controller (17) and a robot arm (4) moved by the robot controller. The robot arm has an end effector (16) for moving the component carried by the lifting bar, where the lifting bar is stationarily installed in the mobile platform.