Development of a 4-DOF Industrial Robot System

In this work, a 4-DOF industrial robot system with three translational and one rotational motions which is widely used in palletizing applications is developed. In order for small robot manufacturing companies to develop their own robot systems for CNC machining and/or general automations, the analysis and design methods of a 4-DOF robot manipulator are presented and the development of a PC-based robot controller with EtherCAT are introduced. It is noted that the robot controller is developed by using Simulink Real-Time, which can provide an integrated environment of easier control algorithm development and data logging. Through position control and accuracy/repeatability measurement results, the developed robot prototype has comparable performances with commercial counterparts. In the future works, the advanced functions of industrial robots such as kinematic calibration, vibration suppression control, computed torque control, etc. will be investigated.