Robotic assembly using IPMC for compliance in SCARA & 4-bar mechanism

Robotic assembly is an important process in the electronics and automobile industries in which small parts like pins etc. are assembled together. Humans are adept at assembly but advanced robots still find it difficult to assemble small components because during assembly there always exist errors in the positioning of parts. The error emanates from the robotic system itself or from the manufacturing processes used to make the parts. One way to perform successful assembly is by providing some compliance that can accommodate the errors in parts positioning. In this book, active compliance is provided in a SCARA by adding an IPMC compliant gripper as an end effector. Also IPMC patches and an IPMC compliant gripper is designed for flexible 4 bar mechanism to actively control the coupler path and deflection during assembly. The major advantage of IPMC is that it can be actuated by small voltage (0-3 V) which does not require sophisticated controllers. Hence, they are best suited for adding active compliance during assembly. This also proves the effectiveness of enhancing robotic assembly by adding compliance using IPMC.