My name is Christoph Parletz from Schunk and here I will show you what
we have achieved in 30 years of gripper development at Schunk.
This is our human five-finger hand.
We have installed a total of nine motors in the hand itself and they
control a variety of different axes, so that we have, for example, an
engine that rolls in all three axes of the little finger.
We have some motors in the fingers themselves.
We also have an engine that does something very typical, which only
humans and primates can do, to put the thumb opposite the index
finger.
At the same time, the hand closes.
We also have a degree of freedom to spread all fingers together, so
that we can reproduce, for example, the complete human finger alphabet
with these nine motors.
We have not only managed to install the motors in the hand, which
drive the axes directly via spindle axes and not via any cables, but
we have also managed to integrate the complete electronics for the
hand, so that we always have a modular approach, as is customary with
our Schunk products.
We can very easily open this switch and screw a completely different
gripper onto the robot arm.
The hand is available in both a left and a right version.
We will put on a small series, but this product is of course intended
purely for research and development purposes.
We are not yet ready to use something like this industrially, but we
already want to make components and hands available for research
today, so that we already have the software and technologies in 10 or
15 years to be able to use such hands industrially at some point.
Here we can see our current lightweight arm, the LWA-4P, the so-called
Powerball arm, with which we have managed to build a complete six-axis
robot arm in a very compact space and with very light construction.
The robot actually consists of three individual modules.
Each module contains two axes and these two axes can be controlled
completely from each other, so that we can build a complete six-axis
robot arm with these three modules.
The special feature of our modules is the lightweight construction.
This means that we have an operating weight of almost 6 kg with an own
weight of 14 kg, so that we almost reach the ratio of 1 to 2.
And we operate this whole system with 24 volts, so that we can ideally
operate mobile applications or portable applications, battery-operated
applications.
Only the CAN bus comes out of the arm at the bottom, in order to
perform the superordinated synchronization of the axes and the 24
volts.
And we have a certain individual flange at the top, where we can
attach the most different handles, hands or tools.
There are different ways to implement the superordinated control of
the robot arm.
This is sufficient from an industrial solution, where robot project
trajectories can be transmitted using an SPS and a teach panel.
This is sufficient from an industrial solution, where robot project
trajectories can be transmitted using an SPS and a teach panel.
Up to a completely different extreme with an open source solution, the
ROS operating system on a Linux-based system, exactly the same robot
with the exact same interfaces.
The robot is used, as I said, mainly in mobile applications, where we
work battery-operated.
These can be wheel-driven applications, i.e.
on any roadways.
It can be sled-operated systems.
It is important that we can work with the lightweight and the 24 volts
ideally and autonomously and independently of external power supply.