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ASSESSMENT OF A NOVEL POSITION VERIFICATION SENSOR TO IDENTIFY AND ISOLATE ROBOT WORKCELL HEALTH DEGRADATION

Published

Author(s)

Brian A. Weiss, Jared Kaplan

Abstract

Manufacturing processes have become increasingly sophisticated leading to greater usage of robotics. Sustaining successful manufacturing robotic operations requires a strategic maintenance program. Maintenance can be very costly, especially when some manufacturers unnecessarily spend resources (i.e., time, money) to maintain their equipment. To reduce maintenance costs, manufacturers are exploring how they can assess the health of their robot workcell operations to enhance their maintenance strategies. Effective health assessment relies upon capturing appropriate data and generating intelligence from the workcell. Multiple data streams relevant to a robot workcell may be available including robot controller data, a supervisory programmable logic controller data, maintenance logs, process/part quality data, and equipment/ process fault and/or failure data. This data can be extremely informative, yet the sheer volume and complexity of this data can be both overwhelming, confusing, and paralyzing. Personnel at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a test method and companion sensor to assess the health of robot workcells which will yield an additional and unique data stream. The intent is that this data stream can either serve as a surrogate for larger data volumes to reduce the data collection and analysis burden on the manufacturer; or add more intelligence to assessing robot workcell health. This article will present the immediate effort focused on verifying the companion sensor. Results of the verification test process are discussed along with preliminary results of the sensor's performance during verification testing.
Proceedings Title
Proceedings of the ASME 2020 15th International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference MSEC2020
Conference Dates
June 22-26, 2020
Conference Location
Cincinnati, OH

Keywords

condition monitoring, degradation, diagnostics, industrial robot systems, kinematics, manufacturing processes, manufacturing systems, prognostics, prognostics and health management (PHM), testbed, use cases, verification, workcell

Citation

Weiss, B. and Kaplan, J. (2020), ASSESSMENT OF A NOVEL POSITION VERIFICATION SENSOR TO IDENTIFY AND ISOLATE ROBOT WORKCELL HEALTH DEGRADATION, Proceedings of the ASME 2020 15th International Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference MSEC2020, Cincinnati, OH, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=929348 (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created June 26, 2020, Updated June 24, 2020