The Development of an Articulated Direct-drive Manipulator with Six Degrees of Freedom
1987 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 36-43
Details
1987 Volume 5 Issue 1 Pages 36-43
This paper describes the development of a direct-drive manipulator with six degrees of freedom, and its improvement for the practical use. The direct-drive was thought to be the most idealistic drive method for articulated manipulators, and in this research, it was incorporated to obtain both high positioning accuracy and high reliability using this method.
To realize useful direct-drive manipulator with reasonable production cost, special servo components were developed. The actuator is an inductor type synchronous motor which has about 40 times higher torque than that of DC motors of the same weight, and the position sensor is an optical resolver with very high resolution of 1, 146, 880 pulses/rev.
An articulated manipulator with six degrees of freedom was developed using these servo components, and both the positioning resolution less than 3μm and the repeatability less than 2μm were obtained. Moreover, a new improved prototype model was developed, and was successfully applied to the adjust ment and final testing of industrial recorders.
