ROBOTICS
Eureka Robotics, a tech spin-off from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), has developed a technology that provides industrial robots with touch sensitivity close to that of human hands, meaning they are able to manipulate tiny glass lenses, electronics components and engine gears that are just millimetres in size without damaging them.
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urrent robots in the market have Centre at NTU’s School of Mechanical and either high accuracy but low agility Aerospace Engineering. (where robots perform the same “These tasks all share a common charmovements repeatedly such as acteristic: the ability to maintain consistin a car factory) or low accuracy but high ent contact with a surface. If our human agility (such as robots handling packages of hands are deprived of our touch sensitivity, different sizes in logistics). This is because such as when wearing a thick glove, we the programming of the force controller is would find it very hard to put tiny Lego extremely complicated, requiring long hours blocks together, much less assemble the Eureka Robotics co-founders Dr Hung Pham to perfect the grip just for a specific task. tiny components of a car engine or of a and Associate Professor Pham Quang Cuong Seeking to master touch sensitivity and camera used in our mobile phones.” with a Denso Wave robot equipped with the dexterity like in human hands, Eureka Robotics The technology has already been deployed Dynamis force feedback technology software. co-founders NTU Associate Professor Pham in Eureka’s custom-built robots, such as Image credit: Eureka Robotics. Quang Cuong and Dr Hung Pham developed Archimedes, which can now handle fragile a complex artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm called Dynamis. The optical lenses and mirrors with human-like dexterity. It will soon be proprietary force feedback technology was previously demonstrated made available for a large number of industrial robots worldwide by a robot which assembled an IKEA chair in just 20 minutes, and by Denso Wave, part of the Toyota Group; customers will have the has since been upgraded even further. option to include the new technology as part of the force controller, The new software powered by Dynamis, known as Force Sen- which reads the force detected by a sensor on the robot’s wrist sor Robust Compliance Control, requires only a single parameter and applies force accordingly. Apply too little force and the items to be set — the stiffness of the contact (either soft, medium or may not be assembled correctly, while applying too much force hard). Despite its simple set-up, it has been shown to outperform could damage the items. conventional robotic controllers which required an enormous amount “The technology, which will be installed in Denso robots, is a of expertise and time to fine-tune. technology for force feedback, which is becoming more and more By deploying this technology, robotics engineers can now imbue important in the practical use of robotics,” said Hiroyasu Baba, robots with both high accuracy and high agility (HAHA) on a large FA/Robotics Business Unit Product Planning Department, Manager scale, paving the way for industrial applications that were previ- of Denso Wave. “Thanks to the development capabilities of Eureka ously very difficult or impossible to implement, such as handling Robotics, the system is advanced yet easy to use and light enough and assembly of delicate, fragile objects such as optical lenses, to be integrated into our standard robot controllers.” electronics components or engine gears. To be equipped with the Force Sensor Robust Compliance “Today, Dynamis has made it easy for anyone to program Control capability, robots already running on Denso Wave’s RC8 touch-sensitive tasks that are usually done by humans, such as controllers will be required to perform a simple software update assembly, fine manipulation, polishing or sanding,” said Assoc Prof from December 2021 onwards, while newly shipped RC8 controlPham, who is also the Deputy Director of the Robotics Research lers will come packed with the software available for activation.
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IMPROVING TOUCH SENSITIVITY IN INDUSTRIAL ROBOTS
