How to Remove the Return Motion in Robotic Path Planning - Sponsored Whitepaper

A novel closed loop track based multi-head robot has been developed to increase material handing throughput. This robot allows for waves of autonomous robot heads to move materials in the working path by eliminating the traditional return path. This is advantageous for the singulation of product from bulk, for high volume material handling from large conveyors, and other applications.

The world of industrial robot arms has been mostly limited to the standard robot motion cycle, where a robot and gripper will move a part as shown in Fig. 1. The up, over and place motions, referred to as the “Work Motion”, produces a useful operation. The other up, over and down motion, referred to as the “Return Motion”, is wasted time and energy. It is required as the robot and gripper must return to complete the motion cycle. And except in limited cases where two SCARA arms can coordinate their motion, the “Return Motion” also occupies 3 dimensional space such that no other robot can move the next part during that time. This can lead to a very inefficient use of time in many production situations. Or it can lead to the designing of very fast robots (using accelerations and decelerations of up to 10 g's) that often move or place the carried part so roughly that the part flies out from the gripper, misses its target, or gets damages by the high g loading.