Motion Applications

Posts about:

Mobile Robotics

Robotic Wheel Drive

Robotic Wheel Drive means controlling wheels used to propel robotic devices such as warehouse robotics, rovers, agricultural robots, robotic lawn mowers and a wide array of mobile devices. Some such devices have two primary drive wheels but three, four and even higher numbers of drive wheels are possible. The unique motion control application that ties these machines together is the challenge of slip control and navigation over uneven and physically diverse terrain.

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Robotic Gripper Control

Robotic Gripper Control specifically means control methods associated with getting a robotic 'hand' to grip an object safely - applying neither too much or too little force. Too much and the object may be crushed or damaged, and too little and the object may be dropped during robot arm motion. Looking at this problem more generally though this combined position and torque control problem is relevant to a broad category of applications including screw cap applicators, cobots, press fit equipment, surgical robotics, and more.

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CAM Profiling

CAM profiling is a general purpose motion technique utilizing a pre-stored look-up table of desired positions driven by an incoming command encoder datastream. CAMs are especially useful for encoding profiles which don’t follow a standard envelop such as a trapezoidal or parabolic profile. While originally used just to replicate mechanical rotating CAMs, electronic CAM profiling has grown to provide an array of profile generation and position compensation functions.

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Indexer Control

Indexers, sometimes also called front end loaders, are general purpose devices that operate in the vertical dimension and form the basis of storage and retrieval systems as well devices such as Semiconductor SMIF-pod access systems. The focus of this motion application will be control of the vertical axis motion, but many storage and retrieval systems couple the vertical axis with a robotic arm or actuator to deliver the carried object to its final storage location.

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