Mating of Rigid Parts by a Manipulator With Its Own Compliance

Abstract

In most assembly tasks involving mating of parts, industrial robots are not equipped with special compliant devices such as a remote center compliant hand. It is useful to know how the mating force and part movement are affected by assembly compliance, which depends upon robot configuration, and by other assembly parameters such as initial position errors, clearance between mating parts, etc. Such knowledge is helpful to the design of the layout of an assembly cell, specification of robot accuracy, specification of manufacturing tolerance, and so on. This paper derives the mating force and part movement in the mating of rigid cylindrical parts by an industrial manipulator with its own compliance, using a planar peg-in-hole insertion model. The derived mathematical relations are experimentally verified by performing insertion tests with a SCARA-type robot.