Strategy for Roller Chain Assembly With Parallel Jaw Gripper

For realizing a versatile, flexible robotic assembly system in manufacturing, robots need to handle not only rigid parts but also parts with flexible characteristics such as belts, cables, roller chains, and so on. This letter presents a strategy for assembling a roller chain to a set of sprockets with a conventional parallel jaw gripper, utilizing the property of the roller chain. Targeting the roller chain assembly of a belt drive unit designed for the World Robot Summit 2018, the validity and the utility of the proposed strategy are experimentally verified.