Minarik Drives Announces Distribution Agreement with Kaman Industrial Technologies

Minarik Drives is very pleased to announce that it has signed and implemented a National Distribution Agreement with Kaman Industrial Technologies.  This agreement will further enhance a partnership that will provide Minarik Drives with 200 new locations and will provide Kaman Industrial Technologies a premier DC drive and drive systems product line.

“We are very pleased to add Kaman Industrial’s selling capability and the value added approach they brings to their customers to our already strong distribution channel.” said John Hegel, President of Minarik Drives.  “Kaman’s penetration into the user and OEM markets will open doors for us that had been previously inaccessible and will help us serve a greater cross section of business across the U.S.”

Minarik Drives is an independent company that specializes in low to medium power electric drive and power applications.  It has been a standard, and a leader, in the DC drive business for almost 60 years.  With design engineering and manufacturing headquartered in S. Beloit, Illinois, it provides standard and customized solutions at a globally competitive price.  More information about Minarik Drives is available at www.minarikdrives.com or by calling 815-624-5959.

ABB adds midrange robot for the 12 to 20 kg payload class

ABB Robotics introduced the IRB 2600, the latest model in its medium capacity range of multipurpose robots. This robot is compact but with an ultra-wide working range and a payload capacity up to 20 kg.  It also offers the best accuracy and speed in its class, improving productivity through increased output, faster cycle times and lower scrap rates.  It is suited for arc welding, machine tending, material handling and a variety of process applications.

The IRB 2600 is the second introduction from ABB’s fourth-generation of midrange industrial robots, a structured portfolio redesign that began with the 2009 introduction of the IRB 4600 family of robots in the 20 to 60 kg payload range.  At weights of 284 kg and 435 kg respectively for the heaviest models, the IRB 2600 and IRB 4600 are among the lightest robots available in their payload ranges.

The IRB 2600 offers:

–Flexible mounting.  It can be floor-, wall-, invert- or shelf-mounted, reducing floor space requirements and increasing access to the equipment being served. Wall-mounting is a new possibility for a robot of this size. These features enable more creative cell designs, more efficient use of available space and easier integration into existing production lines.

–Compact and lightweight:  The robot has a total arm weight of less than 300 kg and occupies less floor space than other robots in its class. This makes it easier for the arm to reach down below its own base, allowing for smaller production cells.

–Speed and improved cycle times:  The IRB 2600 is quick and can improve production cycle times by up to 25%. The high joint speeds and quick acceleration are achieved by combining new lightweight mechanical linkages and ABB’s patented second generation QuickMove™ motion control technology.

The IRB 2600 family contains three versions: two short arm variants (1.65 m) for 12 or 20 kg payloads, and a long arm variant (1.85 m) with a 12 kg payload.  With the wrist vertical, up to a 27 kg payload is achievable for pick and place packaging applications. The robot has as standard Ingress Protection (IP) 67 rating and “Foundry Plus 2,” a further protection level, is available as an option.

ABB Robotics
www.abb.com/robotics

Landcrawler Robot Wobbles But Doesn’t Fall

This funny lookin’ fella weighs just 27 pounds, has 12 legs, and can carry you around on its back if you let it.

The Land Crawler xTreme robot offers its master a ride on top of  its square platform top, provided you don’t weigh more than 175 pounds. As it ambles around, it definitely doesn’t look like the smoothest or speediest way to get around the place, but it sure has got plenty of style doing it.

Funny thing is the maker of the robot says he made the Land Crawler eXtreme as a toy for his 2-year old son because he told him that he wanted to ride on a robot. Why couldn’t we all have dads who were that handy with robotics?

technabob.com

Universal Gripper Utilizes Coffee Bean-Filled Balloon

Gripping and holding of objects are key tasks for robotic manipulators. The development of universal grippers able to pick up unfamiliar objects of widely varying shape and surface properties remains, however, challenging. Most current designs are based on the multifingered hand, but this approach introduces hardware and software complexities. These include large numbers of controllable joints, the need for force sensing if objects are to be handled securely without crushing them, and the computational overhead to decide how much stress each finger should apply and where.

Here we find a completely different approach to a universal gripper. Individual fingers are replaced by a single mass of granular material that, when pressed onto a target object, flows around it and conforms to its shape. Upon application of a vacuum the granular material contracts and hardens quickly to pinch and hold the object without requiring sensory feedback.  The volume changes less than 0.5% suffice to grip objects reliably and hold them with forces exceeding many times their weight.

The universal gripper utilizes ground coffee beans inside of a balloon.  The coffee beans offer an interlocking grain that proved better than other materials tested that ranged from sand to ground rubber tires.

The Universal Gripper uses ground coffee beans inside of a balloon

Veiw full photo gallery here

The operating principle is the ability of granular materials to transition between an unjammed, deformable state and a jammed state with solid-like rigidity. They delineate three separate mechanisms, friction, suction, and interlocking, that contribute to the gripping force. Using a simple model we relate each of them to the mechanical strength of the jammed state. This advance opens up new possibilities for the design of simple, yet highly adaptive systems that excel at fast gripping of complex objects.

Universal Gripper Demonstration

Universal Gripper Pouring Water

www.pnas.org

Clean Room, Clean Robot

The consumer electronics market is expected to generate over $165 billion in revenue within the U.S. in 2010, thanks to cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, DVRs, and MP3 players. The sensitive components such devices contain require precise handling during manufacturing. The consumer electronic supply chain with its clean room requirements is growing and clean room robotics will play a key part in this growth. Following is a quick guide to all things clean when it comes to robots.

Clean rooms are classified according to the number and size of the particles permitted per volume of air. For example, a Class 10 clean room denotes that no more than ten particles of 0.5 µm or larger and zero particles of 5.0 or larger are permitted per square foot of air. Contaminants come from people, process, facilities, and equipment. In order to control contaminants that are invisible to the human eye, the manufacturing cell and in many cases the entire room must be controlled. Robots used in this environment must meet stringent clean room certification requirements to prevent them for acting as a source of contamination.

Much of the hardware used in a clean room robot is the same as any other robot with the important exception of a combination of sealed covers to prevent particles from escaping the robot, stainless steel hardware, proper non-gassing lubricants and vacuum to evacuate any internally generated particles. Robots for clean room processes have special considerations for harnesses, . . . “which can be a serious particulate generator and a major design challenge for clean applications,” said Scott Klimczak president of CHAD Industries, a pioneer in the area of wafer and substrate handling WLP I (Wafer Level Packaging) applications.

As a matter of practice, materials prone to particle generation are substituted or coated to eliminate the potential for contamination.

Certification is done by counting the number of particles generated when the robot is in motion. For this process the industry uses particle counters that are calibrated to meet or exceed the standards set by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). In addition to NIST traceable practices, other standards of particle counter calibration include Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) B 9921, Light Scattering Automatic Particle Counter, and ASTM F 328-98, Standard Practice for Calibration of an Airborne Particle Counter Using Monodisperse Particles. Adept Technology, Inc. a leading manufacturer of clean room robots tests robots both internally and through third party testing and certification to ensure integrators and end-users deploy their equipment appropriately to meet manufacturing cleanliness requirements.

There are two accepted clean room specifications, the ISO 14644-1 spec and the Fed 209E spec.

Depending on the cell design and the robot style selected, a lower class robot may be used and still meet the overall system requirements if the system is designed appropriately. For example, for a semiconductor wafer application, if a robot can operate under the wafer with a vertical laminar flow of clean air present sweeping the particles away from the product, the ultimate requirement for the robot may be less stringent.

Installing the clean room robot requires attention to cleanliness. “Robots built for Class 1 environments are wrapped in several layers to protect them as they are shipped to the site,” said Kevin Lonie, application sales manager for Clear Automation, a Connecticut based automation integrator specializing in the design, engineering, fabrication and installation of integrated robotic and machine vision systems. “Then at the site the equipment is moved through progressively cleaner spaces as the wrapping is wiped down and finally removed before entering its ultimate clean room destination.”

Once wiped down with clean room wipes to remove any foreign particles, it is a good practice to connect the robot to the plant’s vacuum system and evacuate the robot for several hours to make sure all particles are purged completely.

www.adept.com

Mechatronics Meets Miniaturization

Larger-scale mechatronic systems include this integrated size 17 stepper motor and IDEA drive from Haydon Kerk.

Piezoelectric micro motors satisfy the need for linear motion in miniature products. These millimeter-scale motors are less than half the size of solenoids or traditional electromagnetic micro motors. They are more efficient at small sizes, and produce direct linear motion without gears or drive trains. They also offer longer travel, higher precision and higher force than solenoids or shape memory alloys (SMAs). These features make them suitable for use in portable battery-powered devices, such as miniature focus systems for cameras in phones or industrial laptops, or any application requiring small size and high precision. These include machine vision, optical fiber and RF tuning devices, medical devices, and military systems for vision, targeting and control.

Since 2006, SQUIGGLE piezo motor systems have shrunk in size from (at right) a 12 mm diameter motor with 51 x 76 x 14 mm drive card, to (at left) a 2 x 2 x 5 mm motor with a flip-chip drive ASIC (shown on the dime). This enabled the creation of integrated micro-mechatronics modules such as the M3-L module (center) – complete closed-loop motion systems in housings of less than 7 x 12 x 30 mm.

Designing with piezoelectric (piezo) motors requires a different mindset than that used with traditional servo or stepmotors. The traditional approach of specifying the motor and then buying or designing the control system works for servo and stepmotors because there is a vast body of “cookbook motor” control solutions and experienced drive teams available for traditional motor implementation. This is not the case for piezo motors, which require special drive circuits to create and maintain ultrasonic resonant vibrations in the motor.

In addition, piezo motors are most effective when the mechanics, electronics, control system, software – and even the motor design itself – are developed in concert. In this way the piezoelectric ceramics, the silicon, and the system can be tuned to work together for optimal performance. It is a perfect illustration of the benefits of a mechatronic design process.

Miniaturization meets mechatronics
The last five years have seen impressive miniaturization of piezo motors. One example is our SQUIGGLE motor. Recent innovations have yielded dramatic reductions in the size of the drive electronics. Such reductions were possible in part through collaboration with TDK-EPC to develop new, lower-voltage piezo actuators and eliminate the need for voltage boost circuits; and in part by work with analog IC experts at austriamicrosystems to incorporate more intelligence into the piezo drive ASIC.

These advances enabled new integrated micro-mechatronic modules: small closed-loop actuators that serve as simple “drop in” subsystems in OEM product designs. The system designer provides high-level commands to the module through a standard serial interface. A 3.3 Vdc battery provides power. The mechanical coupling is customized to the application: to move a lens, adjust a grating, push a valve, and so on.

Such micro-mechatronic modules typically provide as much as 50 grams force with precision of one-half micron and closed-loop accuracy measured in tens of microns.

Mechatronics compared to micro-mechatronics
In some ways these micro-mechatronic modules are analogous to larger versions. However, there are important differences. For example, Haydon Kerk combines its IDEA drive with a size 17 stepper motor to create an integrated 60 x 40 x 70 mm mechatronic system that is PC-programmable. According to Haydon Kerk’s Ray LaChance, this integrated drive system is for designers who need a few thousand units per year. Design teams making higher-volume products typically create their own drivers, relying on experienced in-house drive teams and libraries of standard drive approaches.

In contrast, driving piezo motors requires specialized knowledge and experience to create control systems that optimize the motor and drive performance under a range of conditions (including varying input voltage, duty cycle, environment, and load). Load coupling techniques are also important for maximum performance and operating life.

The latest drive ASIC for the SQUIGGLE motor incorporates numerous drive functions that in earlier versions were implemented off-chip. The result is a reduction in overall system size.

Innovation miniaturizes components
Our initial focus was to reduce the size of the motor. The SQUIGGLE motor design has proven to be highly scalable, shrinking by a factor of 100 since the first model was introduced in 2004. The current model measures less than 3 x 3 x 6 mm with housing.

Unlike other piezo motors, where the piezo elements push directly on a stator, this design uses ultrasonic vibrations of the piezo elements to create resonant orbital vibrations in a nut. These minute vibrations drive a threaded screw forward or backward, creating direct-drive linear motion. In this design the piezo ceramics are decoupled from the load path, enabling high force and robustness.

The innovations that allowed miniaturization of this motor included the ability to machine tiny screws with precision threads, greater material choices, fine-tuning the geometry of the piezo ceramics, and creating micro-manufacturing processes for semi-automated and automated assembly of the tiny components.

Next the company turned its focus to miniaturizing the drive electronics. The input to the piezoelectric elements is a set of phase-shifted waveforms that match the resonant frequency of the motor. While other techniques are used, motor speed is typically controlled by varying the amplitude of the voltage.

In the push to miniaturize the drivers, the team zeroed in on the need to reduce the voltage level required to excite the piezoelectric elements. Like most piezo motors, SQUIGGLE motors employ “hard” PZT ceramic material to minimize dielectric losses and associated temperature rise. This material requires an applied voltage of around 40 V to create motion. For battery-power operation, this necessitated a dc-to-dc step-up converter in the drive ASIC, as well as external components to regulate and boost voltage. While total drive footprint for these components was approximately 6 x 9 mm, many OEMs wanted even smaller drivers. Some, especially in medical applications, were uncomfortable with the presence of 40 V in the system even though the drive IC operated on 3.3 V battery power.

In 2008, we partnered with TDK-EPC to develop a piezoelectric drive element with reduced input voltage requirements. The resulting element consists of multiple thin layers of hard piezo ceramic material, co-fired into a single plate. It has the same dimensions and performance as the original monolithic element, but requires only 2.8 V applied voltage.

This change eliminated the need for the step-up converter and boost circuits, and allowed austriamicrosystems to create a smaller driver for the reduced-voltage motor. With this iteration, austriamicrosystems also moved from QFN packaging to wafer-level chip scale packaging (WLCSP), shrinking the drive ASIC from 4 x 4 mm to 1.8 x 1.8 mm. Only two external capacitors are needed, for a total drive circuit footprint of 2 x 3 mm.

At the same time, the design teams packed more features into the smaller chip to enhance motor and system performance. For example, on-chip frequency generation eliminated the need for an external clock. Hybrid full-bridge/half-bridge drivers replaced half-bridge versions, allowing the driver to regulate the voltage to the motor and automatically switch drivers to conserve power at slower speeds, or deliver constant speed as the battery voltage drops. These features reduced system power consumption by more than 30%, providing an additional benefit for battery-operated applications.

Other features in the new ASIC include patent-pending technology to monitor motor performance and adjust the drive frequency to maintain a lock on the mechanical resonant frequency of the motor, which can vary with temperature. This ensures optimal motor performance over wide temperature ranges and high duty cycles.

Miniaturization enables micro-mechatronics
With the drive electronics now smaller than the motor itself, the design team created closed-loop control systems using these components.

SQUIGGLE motors have good position resolution: pulsing the drive signal can cause the motor to move distances as small as half a micrometer per pulse. However, the motor speed—and hence distance travelled per pulse—will vary with applied load and device friction. A closed-loop control system is needed to achieve exact positioning, repeatable bi-directional positioning, or precise speed.

The ability to integrate closed-loop controls into a micro module was aided by recent advances in non-contact position sensors and microprocessors.

The TRACKER position sensor, a joint development by New Scale and austriamicrosystems, is a non-contact magnetic encoder that gives direct digital output, eliminating the need for external pulse counters. At only 3 mm total height including the magnet, it is smaller than optical encoders with glass slides and does not require a light source, which is of particular benefit in optical lens positioning applications. The sensor has a built-in zero reference and 0.5 μm resolution.

A 2.4 x 2.4 mm mini microprocessor integrates into a module with the motor, driver and position sensor. The microprocessor is small and inexpensive enough to allow the company to add intelligence to the module with negligible impact on cost or size. The microprocessor receives position information from the position sensor, and uses on-board PID control to adjust the motor drive signal based on proximity to the target position.

Embedded in a system, the module accepts high-level ASCII commands from the system controller through standard serial interface (I2C or SPI). The command set includes commands to set the motor speed, move, halt, move a specified distance, and move to a target position.

Thus the module could be used in a number of motion tasks. The move-to-target-position command allows the module to travel to any number of pre-set positions, for example moving a grating to tune a laser to selected wavelengths. The move and halt commands can be used to move the actuator until a given condition is reached, for example in an auto focus system. Camera module developers use their auto focus algorithms to command the actuator to move a lens in either direction and halt when focus is achieved.

Motor, driver, position sensor and microprocessor are integrated to provide closedloop linear motion with simple high-level command input via standard serial interface

The ability to use high-level ASCII commands to move the actuator dramatically simplifies the task of embedding precise micro motion into a system design. For evaluation and testing, a USB adapter lets users connect the module to a PC and end commands to the module using the graphical user interface of New Scale Pathway software.

The M3 micro-motion modules demonstrate the advantage of using the mechatronic design process. Today engineers are using this tiny system-level actuator to add motorized focus to compact biometric sensing and machine vision cameras and create compact RF and optical tuning systems.

New Scale Technologies
www.newscaletech.com

austriamicrosystems
www.austriamicrosystems.com

Haydon Kerk
www.haydonkerk.com

TDK-EPC
www.tdk-epc.us

Iron Man Suit Becoming A Reality

Raytheon’s second-generation exoskeleton (XOS 2), essentially a wearable robotics suit, was unveiled for the first time recently during an event at the company’s Salt Lake City research facility. XOS 2 is lighter, stronger and faster than its predecessor, yet it uses 50 percent less power, and its new design makes it more resistant to the environment.

View a full photo gallery here

The wearable robotics suit is being designed to help with the many logistics challenges faced by the military both in and out of theater. Repetitive heavy lifting can lead to injuries, orthopedic injuries in particular. The XOS 2 does the lifting for its operator, reducing both strain and exertion. It also does the work faster. One operator in an exoskeleton suit can do the work of two to three soldiers. Deploying exoskeletons would allow military personnel to be reassigned to more strategic tasks. The suit is built from a combination of structures, sensors, actuators and controllers, and it is powered by high pressure hydraulics.

Representatives from Paramount Home Entertainment, including the actor Clark Gregg (aka Agent Phil Coulson of the Marvel® Movie franchise) were in attendance to capture footage of XOS 2 to include in a video that’s being produced to support the release of Iron Man® 2 on DVD and Blu ray.

www.raytheon.com

Festo Turns An Elephant’s Trunk Into A Robotic Arm

Smart engineers copy ideas. Great engineers copy nature. Festo’s Bionic Handling Assistant is a robot arm modeled on an elephant’s trunk (or Dr. Octavius if you’re a Spiderman fan), and it has all the supple flexibility of the original. Using hollow plastic chambers that change size with air pressure, the Bionic Handling Assistant can move through an incredible range of motion in three dimensions. It’s designed to provide gentle forces, and to give when pushed, making it safe for working with humans in a working environment.

The Bionic Handling Assistant was developed through Festo’s Bionic Learning Network, a coordinated group of industrial and academic research partners interested in bringing nature inspired concepts to robotics.  However, all this biology inspired innovation is really only going to be useful if we can find the right applications. Opportunities for the Bionic Handling Assistant in medicine, manufacturing, and mechanical repair are shown below.

For a better idea of how the pressurized air allows the Bionic Handling Assistant to move, here’s a more detailed animation of the robot arm:

No matter where it eventually is applied, the Bionic Handling Assistant is a good sign that engineers have a lot to work with when mimicking natural structures. With all the humanoid robots running shuffling around it’s important to remember that the primate form is only one of many successful architectures we should be copying. Robots that swim like fish, fly like insects, and form colonies like bees could all have crucial applications in the years ahead as we continue to explore the world. It will be interesting to see which animals the Festo Bionic Learning Network pursues next.

www.festo.com

Biotech Wizards Engineer Electronic Skin

Biotech wizards have engineered electronic skin that can sense touch, in a major step towards next-generation robotics and prosthetic limbs.

The lab-tested material responds to almost the same pressures as human skin and with the same speed, they reported in the British journal Nature Materials.

Important hurdles remain but the exploit is an advance towards replacing today’s clumsy robots and artificial arms with smarter, touch-sensitive upgrades, they believe.

The “e-skin” made by Javey’s team comprises a matrix of nanowires made of germanium and silicon rolled onto a sticky polyimide film.

The team then laid nano-scale transistors on top, followed by a flexible, pressure-sensitive rubber. The prototype, measuring 49 square centimetres (7.6 square inches), can detect pressure ranging from 0 to 15 kilopascals, comparable to the force used for such daily activities as typing on a keyboard or holding an object.

A different approach was taken by a team led by Zhenan Bao, a Chinese-born associate professor at Stanford University in California who has gained a reputation as one of the top women chemists in the United States.

Their approach was to use a rubber film that changes thickness due to pressure, and employs capacitors, integrated into the material, to measure the difference. It cannot be stretched, though.

The achievements are “important milestones” in artificial intelligence, commented John Boland, a nanoscientist at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, who hailed in particular the use of low-cost processing components.

In the search to substitute the human senses with electronics, good substitutes now exist for sight and sound, but lag for smell and taste.

Touch, though, is widely acknowledged to be the biggest obstacle.

Even routine daily actions, such as brushing one’s teeth, turning the pages of a newspaper or dressing a small child would easily defeat today’s robots.

Bao added important caveats about the challenges ahead.

One is about improving the new sensors. They respond to constant pressure, whereas in human skin more complex sensations are possible.

This is because the pressure-sensing cells in the skin can send different frequencies of signal — for instance, when we feel something painful or sharp, the frequency increases, alerting us to the threat.

In addition, Bao warned, “connecting the artificial skin with the human nerve system will be a very challenging task”.

“Ultimately, in the very distant future, we would like to make a skin which performs really like human skin and to be able to connect it to nerve cells on the arm and thus restore sensation.

“Initially, the prototype that we envision would be more like a handheld device, or maybe a device that connects to other parts of the body that have skin sensation.

“The device would generate a pulse that would stimulate other parts of the skin, giving the kind of signal ‘my (artificial) hand is touching something’, for instance.”

In the future, artificial skin could be studded with sensors that respond to chemicals, biological agents, temperature, humidity, radioactivity or pollutants.

berkeley.edu



Motion Control System Includes Solid-State, Embedded PC

Siemens announced that an embedded PC is now available for its Simotion® P320-3 motion control applications. Providing maintenance-free controls, the Simotion P320-3 brings the power and simplicity of a PC to motion control.

The embedded PC, which features a DDR3 memory and an Intel Core2 processor, is free of wear from moving parts, such as hard disks and fans. This compact motion control system provides maximum flexibility and accommodates centralized or decentralized machine concepts for PC-based applications or for applications that require a compact size.

It is designed for many different motion control applications with its multiple onboard interfaces. They support communication over Profinet, the open industrial Ethernet standard, as well as Ethernet interfaces that run at 10 / 100 / 1000 megabit speeds. Four USB interfaces make it simple to connect a keyboard, USB stick, printer or other devices. A DVI port rounds out the links so users can attach a display or monitor. The Simotion P320-3 can also be used in a “headless” configuration without a display, monitor or front panel.

LEDs on the front indicate the operating states, making self-diagnosis easy. The integrated power supply bridges temporary power failures. In the buffered SRAM memory, the process data is saved securely even in the event of a sudden voltage drop. Monitoring functions for the batteries, temperature and program execution are also included. The Windows Embedded Standard 2009 operating system, which increases the reliability of the system, is pre-installed. Additionally, the Simotion runtime system comes installed on the Simotion P320-3.

www.sea.siemens.com

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