Feature article

Motoman markets co-operative and humanoid industrial robots

Christine Connolly
Associate Editor, Industrial Robot
Abstract Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the advantages of two-arm robots in the industrial environment. Design/methodology/approach The innovative thinking behind Motomans dual arm humanoid robot is presented. Then, its technical design and its industrial applications are studied. The general advantages of co-ordinating multiple robot arms are given. Findings Motoman has designed a two-arm robot of human size to take over industrial tasks still performed manually, providing an alternative to the practice of outsourcing such operations to low-cost labour countries. However, its variance from traditional robot design means that its applications are not immediately apparent, and sales so far have been mostly in Japan. The NX100 multiple robot controller allows high-density layouts and reduced cycle times, and makes programming simpler than for a cluster of individually controlled robots. Originality/value Humanoid robots tend to attract hobbyists rather than industrial users. This paper concentrates on a commercially available dualarm robot series and its industrial potential. Keywords Robotics, Control applications, Production methods, Production planning and control Paper type Case study

Cultivating a new market

In 2006, Motoman introduced two-arm robots to the European market. These robots are about the same size as a human being, and are designed to take over industrial tasks that are still performed manually, such as assembly and handling, packaging, machine tending and parts transfer. Motoman hopes to foster a new market, in which manufacturers will choose humanoid robots rather than outsourcing manualintensive tasks to low-cost labour countries. The company has proved that the cost of an industrial robot over its 15-year life, including energy and maintenance, is very competitive with the cost of labour in China, when the necessary housing and food costs are taken into account. Motoman told me that it knows of no other industrial robot company currently competing in the two-arm humanoid market. Founded in 1989, Motoman is the robotic division of Yaskawa Electric Corporation. The parent company has produced robots since the 1970s, and has 200,000 installed robots worldwide. The dual-arm DA series was launched in Japan in late 2005, and the latest slim dual-arm SDA10 (Figure 1) has 15 axes, matching the exibility of the human upper body. Its supply cables run within the robot arms, making the manipulator neat and robust and improving its ability to access all parts of the workspace without colliding or
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snagging. Its small footprint gives access in conned spaces and it has oor, and wall- and ceiling-mount options. A collection of impressive videos on YouTube demonstrate the exibility, accuracy and co-ordination of Motomans two-arm robots, but real industrial applications are more difcult to nd. Motoman has discovered the need to exhibit and demonstrate these humanoid robots frequently. Since they are so different from traditional robots, their applications are not immediately apparent to potential users. At NPE2006, the international plastics exhibition in Chicago, Motoman demonstrated a conventional high-speed six-axis high performance HP50 robot (Figure 2) packing bottles with a multi-function gripper that needs no adjustment between bottle types. In the same cell, a two-arm DA20 robot demonstrated its exibility by performing bottle decasing, leak testing, labelling, vision inspection and repacking. At the Japan Welding Show 2008, Motoman showed an SDA10 holding a workpiece rmly with its two end effectors and feeding it into a spot welder to make welds at the appropriate locations. When transferring the workpieces to and from the welder, the robot looks rather strange, as its arms bend symmetrically whether at the front and back of its body. Most recently, at the Automation Technology Expo West 2009 in Anaheim, California, Motoman exhibited the humanlike exibility of the SDA10 robot in tending a dial index machine in a multi-process cell.

Technical challenges and specications

The SDA10 has 15 controlled axes, a maximum reach of 970 mm and an overall positional repeatability of ^0.1 mm. Its footprint is 500 500 mm. Each arm carries a maximum payload of 10 kg, and by co-ordinating their actions, the arms are able to lift twice that weight. The arms can work cooperatively and synchronously, or completely independently 417

Industrial Robot: An International Journal 36/5 (2009) 417 420 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited [ISSN 0143-991X] [DOI 10.1108/01439910910980132]

Motoman markets co-operative and humanoid industrial robots Christine Connolly

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 36 Number 5 2009 417 420

Figure 1 The 15-axis Motoman SDA10 robot handles a payload up to 10 kg with each arm, and has integrated supply cables

Figure 2 The HP50 is a six-axis robot with 50 kg payload and extremely good repeatability, with a streamlined body to assist machine-tending operations

to perform different tasks simultaneously. Pneumatic and electrical cabling are contained within the arms, and the robot draws an average power of 4.2 kVA. In order to compress the 15 axes of motion into a human-size space, Motoman invented a new line of actuators, incorporating the motor, drive, and encoder in one small, compact package. The actuators are stackable, and this enables the complete robot arm to be much slimmer. There are practical advantages in streamlining robots: for example, the six-axis HP50 in Figure 2 requires very little installation space, and it can be positioned close to the machines it tends. In seven-axis machines, additional exibility is gained. The SIA20 (slim individual arm) is a narrowprole single-arm robot with 20 kg payload and seven axes, for automatic assembly, inspection, machine tending and handling operations. Figure 3 shows its predecessor, the IA20, with a DA20 two-arm robot. The SIA20 has a smaller footprint than the IA20, and the arm can fold into a tight space to t between two machine tools, yet extend to a reach of 910 mm. It has greater acceleration than the IA20, enabling shorter cycle times. The arm of the SIA20 has a maximum width of 115 mm, and its mechanical exibility allows it to work in intricate co-operative tasks with other robots. It is suggested that since the robot can snake into locations within car bodies-in-white, it may remove the need for deep-throat spot welding guns, and thus reduce the overall size of the robotic welding cell. All these robots use the NX100 controller (Figure 4), which allows real-time synchronisation of four robots with a maximum of 36 axes. Motoman has a long history of co-ordinated multiplerobot control, and it has over 1,000 multi-robot systems installed in Europe. The MRC controller, introduced in 1994, was the rst in the world capable of synchronised control of two robots. With its long history of multiple robot control, Motoman already had 418

a large library of software from which it could develop the necessary algorithms for dual-arm robots. The NX100 controller, introduced in 2006, comes in a cabinet 800 1,000 650 mm, with IP54 class protection. It has 40 digital inputs/outputs as standard, extendable to 1,024. The program memory has the capacity for 60,000 steps, 10,000 instructions and 10,000 programmable logic controller steps. The controller monitors the torque levels of the robot axes, in order to detect collisions. Figure 5 shows the teach pendant, which is 200 340 60 mm in size, with a 6.5 inch colour LCD touch screen display of resolution 640 480 pixels, and weighs 1.3 kg. It uses the Windows CE operating system, and an integrated ash-card slot allows users to back up the memory. All operations from programming through to maintenance can be carried out via the pendant, and the provision of 100 user passwords restricts operator access to the appropriate level of user, editor, maintenance or supervisor. Advanced robot motion control algorithms dynamically calculate axis torque and load in order to improve path

Motoman markets co-operative and humanoid industrial robots Christine Connolly

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 36 Number 5 2009 417 420

Figure 3 The Motoman IA20 snake robot (on the left) has seven-axes in the one arm, and the dual-arm DA20 has 13 axes

Figure 4 The NX100 controller manages four robots, allowing highdensity layouts and facilitating easier programming than with separate systems

accuracy, control vibrations and optimise the motion and speed. The INFORM programming language that drives the robot is also used by the Virtual Robot Controller in Motomans MotoSim EG simulation software. So, programmers can prepare realistic code off-line with accurate cycle-time simulation for multiple arms with either independent or co-ordinated motion, including synchronous systems and dual-arm robots. For non-programmers and operators of limited robot experience, Motoman has introduced EasyLoade machine tending software, released in the USA in June 2008. This uses a graphics wizard rather than text to create complex machinetending operations. Videos on the NX100 pendant illustrate key features. The operator enters the key dimensions for the part, and species the sequence of operations and the appropriate machine for each one. The touch-off positions and pick-up/setdown points are taught by moving the robot to those places. EasyLoad then generates the program automatically, creating logic and safety signals through pre-dened templates. This approach reduces downtime, and allows a single robot to perform many different tasks on a variety of parts.

Applications
In Japan, since the launch of the DA and IA robots in 2005, over 500 units have been sold. They are used on production and assembly lines in automotive, white goods and medical industries. For example, in the automotive industry, they hang doors and mount wheels. They are particularly valuable in highprecision and complex assembly operations, such as medical parts and gears. They are also applied at the packing stage. 419

The web site: www.lovingthemachine.com/2007/07/motomansuperannuates-you.html describes a demonstration at a factory of Hokusho Co. Ltd, which makes conveyors and production lines machinery and packaging and palletising systems. This showed that the Motoman DA10 equipped with a bar code reader can sort and handle 1,000 packages an hour, which is faster than most human workers. The paper also claims that the robot can work in close proximity to humans. One of the videos on YouTube, at: www.youtube.com/ watch?vPSuvFCPgwE8, shows a Motoman humanoid robot delicately assembling a camera by deftly handling small parts with co-ordinated movements of its two arms. I asked how long it would take to program the robot to assemble a camera, and a spokesperson from Motoman Robotics (UK) Ltd estimated from 4 to 5 h for an experienced robot programmer. Another video, contributed by the University of Coimbra in Portugal, shows a DA20 demonstrating the movement and exibility of its joints, and co-ordinating the movements of the two arms to maintain constant orientation and separation of the two end effectors whilst moving both along a straight-line locus. This highlights the ability of the arms to work together on a task. The DIA10 robot can transfer a part from one of its arms to the other. One robot arm can hold the part while the other arm performs operations on the held part. Automation IG is a Motoman solution provider offering turnkey automated systems, and tackling projects from small tooling to large multi-robot integrated systems and production lines. The company frequently uses Motoman robots, and says that where a process is sensitive to angle of attack and access is limited, the two-arm robot could be useful. However, in its work

Motoman markets co-operative and humanoid industrial robots Christine Connolly

Industrial Robot: An International Journal Volume 36 Number 5 2009 417 420

Figure 5 The NX100 teach pendant enables all operations from programming through to maintenance

Figure 6 Automation IG uses three co-ordinating robots in a welding super-cell

workpieces, improving both efciency and quality. For example, where assembly operations require the same controlled temperature and gas environment for multiple welds, it is much more efcient to perform all the welds at the same time with multiple robots. When the robots are controlled by the one NX100, each robot knows the position of all the others, and collision avoidance is simplied. Programming multiple robots on the one controller is also simpler and quicker than that needed for a cluster of individually controlled robots. The multiple robots controlled by a single controller can also be programmed to work independently, performing completely different tasks at the same time.

Conclusions
Two-arm robots are more expensive than conventional robots, but they open up new application possibilities. Their ability to hold with one hand and process with the other reduces tooling requirements. However, outside Japan, the market is proving slow to take off.

so far, Automation IG has not found any applications that would be ideal for two-arm robots. The difculty is in extracting added value, since Motoman and others already offer multiple arm co-ordination. Automation IG has several applications involving multiple robots, and has put videos on YouTube showing SuperCells in which multiple robots work in close proximity to perform welding sequences. In one video, one robot presents the tool to two welding robots, moving in coordination with them so that four circular welds are completed within seconds. Figure 6 also shows this application.

Contacts
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Multi-robot advantages
Motoman has long extolled the virtues of multi-robot control, and this helps explain why it decided to introduce the dualarm robot as an alternative to two robot arms. Co-operating robots can be used in high-density layouts to reduce cycle time. A cell with single controller and multiple robots is particularly useful for symmetrical and distortion-critical

MOTOMAN Robotics UK Ltd, Banbury, UK www. motoman.eu/uk Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Japan www.yaskawa.co.jp/en YouTube videos of Motoman two-arm robots in action www.youtube.com/watch?vPSuvFCPgwE8 Industrial Robotics Research Group, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Coimbra, Portugal http://robota.dem.uc.pt Hokusho Co. Ltd, Kanazawa-city, Ishikawa, Japan www.hokusho.co.jp/english/index.htm Automation IG, Chattanooga, TN, USA www. automationig.com

Corresponding author
Christine Connolly can be contacted at: CCbrigante@aol.com

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