Design and Development of 4-DOF Robot Manipulator with Intermediate Link Motions for Cycle Time Reduction in Automated Production

In this era of Industry 4.0, factories constantly aim to employ robots that provide for the best combination of payload capability and dexterity in order to improve the cycle time and therefore boosting productivity. This paper aims to provide an alternative solution to improve cycle time of a 4-DOF (degree-of-freedom) robot manipulator by harnessing intermediate link motions. The design and kinematic modelling of the robot manipulator are presented. The hardware setup and the robot operational mode are discussed. An experimental setup was developed based on the kinematic model to test the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Experimental results show considerable reduction of cycle time in automated assembly process.