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The purpose of this paper is to present a flexible automation system for the manipulation of fabrics lying on a work table and focuses on the design of a robot control system based on visual servoing and fuzzy logic for handling flexible sheets lying on a table. The main contribution of this paper is that the developed system tolerates deformations that may appear during robot handling of fabrics due to buckling without the need for fabric rigidization.

The vision system, consisting of two cameras, extracts the features that are necessary for handling the fabric despite possible deformations or occlusion from the robotic arm. An intelligent controller based on visual servoing is implemented enabling the robot to handle a variety of fabrics without the need for a mathematical model or complex mathematical/geometrical computations. To enhance its performance, the conventional fuzzy logic controller is tuned through genetic algorithms and an adaptation mechanism and the respective performance is evaluated. The experiments show that the proposed robotic system is flexible enough to handle various fabrics and robust in handling deformations that may change fabric's shape due to buckling.

The experiments show that the proposed robotic system is flexible enough to handle various fabrics and robust in handling deformations that may change fabric's shape due to buckling.

It is not possible to cover all the aspects of robot handling of flexible materials in this paper, since there are still several related issues requiring solutions. Considering the future research work, the proposed approach can be extended to sew fabrics with curved edges and correcting the distortions presented during robot handling of fabrics.

The paper includes implications for robot handling a variety of fabrics with low and medium bending rigidity on a working table. The intent of this paper deals with buckling in context of achieving a successful seam tracking and not the correction strategy against folding or wrinkling problems.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the fabrics' behavior towards robot handling on a working table.

The purpose of this paper is to design a glass handling robot and conduct a finite element analysis and structural optimization to solve the automation handling problem of large-scale glass production line and aiming at the phenomenon that the vibration of robot manipulator may result in breakage of glass products, especially the fragile chemical or medical glassware. Making modal analysis for the robot is to determine its natural frequencies and vibration modes and lay a foundation for the transient analysis to study the vibration shock response of the robot during its start-up and emergency stop operation.

First, a 3D model of the robot is established according to the requirements of the production field and a finite element model is built on the basis of the 3D model. Then the modal and transient analyses of the robot are carried out according to the fact that the maximum vibration impact of the robot usually appears at the start and emergency stop.

The structure of the robot is improved according to the results of finite element analysis. The dynamic analysis results show that the improved robot’s ability to resist deformation under the impact of vibration shock is enhanced, and the robot can operate smoothly and meet the requirements of design in industrial environments.

The research results avoided the damage caused by the vibration and improved the service life of the robot, providing a foundation for the structural design and mass production of the glass handling robot.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel device to handle a robot manipulator which can grip large‐size panels. This concept arises from questioning why the glazing task is always performed manually and it is assumed that if the panel is handled by worker's bare hands, the material is lifted by a robot system and can be assembled to a frame easily and intuitively.

This study proposes the intuitive manipulator device (IMD) which can be attached on the panel directly and connected to it with the coordinate of robot end‐effector based on a virtual coordinate of IMD. The virtual coordinate is defined by the detection of the location of the IMD from the robot end‐effector using IR sensor scanning and origin point estimation method. In this study, the robot manipulator system is operated by a combination of the commands of two IMDs to perform the panel assembly test and its aspect of input commands is compared with the previous force‐control based human‐robot cooperative systems.

The proposed system shows the better performance while reducing the frequent force reflection of robot system against an environment and simplifies the instant input source for robot control system. Those are caused by the intuitiveness of visual servoing performed by operators and the minimization of a force control strategy by utilizing the operator's own sensitivity. The proposed system shows the possibility of efficiency improvement and simple mechatronic system to realize the automation of panel assembly task.

The proposed device alternates the expensive 6‐axis F/T sensor system to handle the robot manipulator by using the two 3‐axis load cell and those force/torque combinations. Also, the developed device is portable and can attach on the material anywhere. That is why this system could cover various sizes of materials. This system minimizes the computational load to control the robot system and improves the efficiency of an assembly task based on the human‐robot cooperation strategy.

Adding mobility to handling functions should lead to increased efficiency in manufacturing. This article examines the role of mobile robots now and in the year 2010.

The purpose of this paper is to review new robots and applications in the food‐related industry through the exhibits at the Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition, Japan.

The paper is based on interviews, exhibitions and press releases.

The paper finds new commercial applications of robotics are emerging, notably in handling viscoelastic materials and the fast pick‐and‐place handling through parallel‐link robots.

This paper provides an overview of the latest robotic applications in the Japanese food industry.

The purpose of this paper is to review the Automate Show (robots and vision) and the Promat Show (material handling) that ran jointly in Chicago, with emphasis on the new robot innovations and applications on display.

In‐depth interviews with exhibitors of robots, as well as system integrators who apply robots to specific categories of applications.

Telepresence robots have come of age with multiple vendors offering units. Delta robots have found a niche in quick handling of packing and order assembly tasks.

Customers will have to begin thinking of robots as much more that automated workers and start to envision them as tools for making it possible for people to be in more than one place at the same time. Logistics customers need to examine the abilities of the delta style robot to do more and faster order assembly than ever before.

A fresh look at innovations in robotic technology for users. Robots are not limited to just “heavy” lifting any more.

The purpose of this paper is to review the Promat Show (material handling) and the Automate Show (robots and vision) run jointly in Chicago with emphasis on new automation innovations for packing and order filling applications.

In‐depth interviews with exhibitors of material handling automation which addresses packing and order filling.

Mobile robots have come of age with multiple vendors offering units for handling goods. Delta robots have found a niche in quick handling of packing and order assembly.

Customers will have to begin thinking of mobile robots as much more autonomous and self‐guiding for goods handling in the warehouse. Logistics customers need to examine the abilities of the delta style robot to do more and faster picking and packing than ever before.

The paper provides an expert insight into how automation innovation continues to reduce cost, improve accuracy and speed of logistics and order filling.

Semiconductor manufacturing industry requires highly accurate robot operation with short install/setup downtime.

We develop a fast, low cost and easy‐to‐operate calibration system for wafer‐handling robots. The system is defined by a fixture and a simple compensation algorithm. Given robot repeatability, end effector uncertainties, and the tolerance requirements of wafer placement points, we derive fixture design and placement specifications based on a statistical tolerance model.

By employing the fixture‐based calibration, we successfully relax the tolerance requirement of the end effector by 20 times.

Semiconductor manufacturing requires fast and easy‐to‐operate calibration systems for wafer‐handling robots. In this paper, we describe a new methodology to solve this problem using fixtures. We develop fixture design criteria and a simple compensate algorithm to satisfy calibration requirements. We also verify our approach by a physical example.

Aims to describe how to make an industrial robot work as a telemanipulator with force feedback, in order to carry out various tasks for remote handling in nuclear fuel cycle plants.

The robot Staübli RX170 (used as a slave arm) has been fitted with a force‐torque sensor and an electronic system for sensors' signals multiplexing. The overall system has been made tolerant to γ radiation up to a 10 kGy integrated dose. The industrial robot has been coupled to a master arm with force feedback capability and to the computer assisted teleoperation controller TAO2000 developed by CEA‐LIST.

The result of the maintenance operation reported in the paper, carried out with a Staübli RX170 robot at AREVA/COGEMA La Hague plant, illustrates the validity of this approach and demonstrates how remote handling can benefit from this new technology.

Introduces the teleoperation of industrial robots as a new solution for the maintenance of nuclear facilities. Wrist force/torque sensing and advanced master‐slave controller provide the operators with a high performance teleoperation system. Only limited modification of the existing design of the industrial robot has been carried out in order to transform it into a nuclear telemanipulator.

This paper aims to illustrate the growing role of robots in the electronics industries.

Following a short introduction, this paper discusses robotic applications and products in three sectors of the electronics industry: semiconductor processing, printed circuit manufacture and electronic product assembly. Finally, conclusions are drawn.

The major application in semiconductor manufacture is the handling of silicon wafers during both front- and back-end processes and products include cleanroom certified multi-axis robotic arms, some mounted on mobile platforms, and automated guided vehicles. Applications in printed circuit board production include component handling and insertion, soldering, inspection, testing and packing. These exploit Cartesian, SCARA and six-axis articulated robots and cobots play an important role where automated and manual processes operate in close proximity. Electronic product assembly applications include part handling, soldering, bonding and sealing, screw driving, test and inspection and packaging. Cobots offer the benefits of a small footprint which allows deployment in the often limited space and use in proximity to humans. As yet, robotic assembly of complex electronic products such as smartphones and computers has not been realised for technical reasons.

This study provides a detailed review of robotic products and applications in three key sectors of the electronics industries.