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Activity

ITRI Robots Ready for Productivity 4.0

Representatives from the government sector and enterprises attend the TIEC-Taiwan opening ceremony.

ITRI developed a teach pendant that allows intuitive operation for controlling robotic arms.

Aligned with the initiative Productivity 4.0, ITRI exhibited several R&D achievements in the 2015 Taiwan Automation Intelligence and Robot Show in July, including collaborative robots, a robot smart teach pendant, and a vision guided robotic (VGR) and inspection platform.

Dr. Jwu-Sheng Hu, General Director of ITRI’s Mechanical and Systems Research Laboratories, indicates that ITRI is dedicated to developing key components for industrial robots, such as robot controllers, visual and tactile sensors, reducers, and automatic guided vehicles. The overall objective is to elevate the manufacturing rate of the supply chain in the domestic robotic industry to over 90%, and increase by 50% the net profit of the industrial robots manufacturing industry. With the support of the intelligent technologies, the added value of the automation industry could be increased by 15%. It is expected that the market size of robot manufacturing can be enlarged and the scope of Taiwan’s industry can be further broadened.

ITRI’s high-precision sorting robot identifies any coarse spots in the pineapple filling.

Dr. Lai-Sheng Chen, General Director of ITRI’s Machine Tools Technology Center, points out that ITRI’s intelligent robotic technologies are developed based on the demand of the industry. For example, the VGR system addresses the flexibility and compatibility issues for Taiwan’s automation industry. It integrates a highly precise manipulator and a high-speed computer vision system, showing great “hand-eye” coordination. The robot cell with the VGR system can be applied to a vision-guided robot to pick and place. A local pineapple cake factory has adopted this application in its production line for automatic inspection.

Another exhibit is the robot teach pendant, which enables an easier process of planning, teaching, guiding and operating a manipulator. Unlike a typical teaching box which is often complex to operate, the developed teach pendant is a tablet PC with an easy-to-use graphic user interface.

ITRI’s high-safety robot includes fully-covered tactile sensors.

Moreover, ITRI showcased the high-safety collaborative robot, which integrates the sensor technology to a manipulator with fully-covered tactile sensor modules. The thin, high-sensitivity tactile sensors are used to detect force and rapidly feedback to the robot controller in order to slow down or stop the robot movement when an unusual force occurs. The main purpose is to enhance operation safety of human-machine collaborative production.

Among ITRI’s exhibits, all the manipulators are configured with the robot controllers developed by ITRI, which are called Motion Intelligence Orchestration (MIO). Integrating visual and force sensing technologies, the controllers manipulate robots with fast, stable and accurate motion control.

Technological Glossary

Productivity 4.0

Productivity 4.0, inspired by Germany’s Industry 4.0, U.S.’ Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP), and Japan’s lean production and manufacturing, is a governmental initiative to overcome industry challenges such as labor shortages and productivity slowdowns. The aim is to promote industry upgrade and increase Taiwan’s competitiveness by combining robotic technologies, cyber-physical systems, IoT (Internet of Things), and big data. Productivity 4.0 is not limited to smart automation for the manufacturing sector, but also includes agriculture and service industries.