What Are Main Parts of Industrial Robots

With the acceleration of the transformation of China’s manufacturing industry, the use of robots is becoming more and more frequent. It is necessary to understand the main application components of industrial robot accessories.

Drives

Drives are the “muscles” of the manipulator. Common drivers include servo motors, stepper motors, air cylinders and hydraulic cylinders, etc. There are also some new drives for some special occasions. It uses for specific work.

Sensors

Sensors are used to collect information about the internal state of the Robot or to communicate with the external environment. The Robot controller needs to know the position of each link in order to know the overall configuration of the robot. A person knows where the arms and legs are even in complete darkness because nerve sensors in the central nervous system within the tendons feed the information back to the person’s brain.

The brain uses this information to measure how much muscle is stretched to determine the state of the arms and legs. For robots, sensors integrated in the robot send information about each joint and link to the controller, which can then determine the configuration of the robot. Robots are often equipped with many external sensors, such as vision systems, tactile sensors, speech synthesizers, etc., to enable the robot to communicate with the outside world.

Controller

The robot controller obtains data from the computer, controls the actions of the actuators. It also coordinates the motion of the robot together with the sensor feedback. If the robot is to take out a part from the cabinet, its first joint angle must be 35°. If the first joint has not reached this angle, the controller will send a signal to the driver (transmitting current to the motor). So that the drive moves. Then the change of the joint angle is measured by the feedback sensor (potentiometer or encoder, etc.) on the joint.

When the joint reaches a predetermined angle, it stops sending control signals. For more complex robots, the speed and force of the robot’s movements are also controlled by the controller. Robot controllers are very similar to the human cerebellum. It controls human movement, although not as powerful as the human brain.