Kinematics simulation and experiment for optimum design of a new prototype parallel robot

Abstract

Robotics and automation have been playing an increasing role in the global manufacturing sector over the past decade. The industrial robot is a sub-unit in automation that has attracted a lot of attention and is rapidly increasing in use. Today's production line uses automation to solve various production problems such as delays, wastage, etc. If automation is not handled well, it can also cause mistakes and damage to production lines. Therefore, in order to create positive effect on the producers, effective planning for the use of robotics and automation is required. Product planning and understanding of robot design and use are required so that the robot can work precisely to suit the working conditions. It is necessary to study the use of robotic arms in production lines. The most important point is to control the robot arm to work properly, in order to get the correct location coordinates. Robot and automation simulator program can simulate the movement of the production process in the form of a computer model. Program will test the desired concepts on the computer. In order to study the system behavior, simulation is allowed before the real work. It leads to automation analyze and improvement to be more effective for time and cost reduction which occur in on-site problem with 3D animation display. Process simulation of Robotics can analyze the arising operation problem such as reach ability, collision detection, operation simulation of other devices with the mechanical system working the robot such as opening and closing of the Jig Fixture or Conveyor movement. The simulation helps operator plan and fix the error during designing time before actual installation. In this thesis, a program design for simulating the trajectory tracking of a parallel robot is proposed. With the MATLAB simulation program, the theory of the inverse kinematic analysis is used to test the coordinate position of the robot arm and the trajectory of the robot model. The simulation results are compared between actual test result and the prototype parallel robot. In order to analyze the precision in the working area of the robot, a prototype parallel robot was designed to work with the Machine vision system to obtain the results from comparison for analysis and understanding the context of automation design. Referring to the result of the inverse kinetics simulations compared with the real experiments, robots are designed to suit the need of each industry. The steady-state joint angle tolerance of the prototype robot arm θ1, θ2, and θ3 ranged from 0° to 4° degrees were examined. The experimental result of image processing and color detection were obtained. According to the machine vision system with the NI Vision LabVIEW program, the result showed more than 95% accuracy.