A framework of industrial operations for hybrid robots

Production equipment is in general collaboratively located in different areas to perform the entire manufacturing process. In order to develop a flexible production line, modern factories are employing industrial robots with 6 degree-of-freedoms (DoFs) to facilitate the task of continuous loading and unloading in the manufacturing process. However, the sizes and spatial position of workpiece are significantly different, and traditional solutions are facing limitations in terms of planar motion and workshop floor cleaning. In this paper, we propose a hybrid robot platform with one mobile robot and one cooperative manipulator (6 DoFs) to be utilized in this industrial operations, especially in the multiple stations operation. Through this platform, we also integrate simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and 3D robot vision technologies, which enables the mobile robot to move to the target position with high localization precision, path planning, autonomous navigation, and obstacle avoidance. Experimental results verify that the proposed framework in discrete production line for the continuous loading and unloading task. The proposed approach can be utilized in flexible manufacture potentially, such as automotive mount and electronic products assembly.