Energy-saving of Robot Arm by Suspending Mechanism Using Spring and Wire

Abstract

Nowadays, it is necessary to save energy of industrial robot arms. Some weight compensation mechanisms have been proposed, however, they are complex and difficult to attach to industrial robots. This paper proposes the method to save energy of robot arm by attaching a simple mechanism, which consists of a wire and springs. We showed energy saving effect in experiments with using industrial robot arm with the mechanism, however, the mechanism is large. Therefore, we propose compact mechanism and show that this mechanism has similar energy saving effect as the previous one.