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Automotive industry, Aerospace industry, Robotics, Assembly
Abstract
New haptic robot arms with powerful force feedback could help product design engineers check out complex assembly problems in a virtual reality environment. Companies in the automotive and aerospace industries are likely to be the first to take advantage of the technology. They could be applying it to design-for-assembly projects by 2005.
Despite great strides in computer simulation and graphics techniques, trial-and-error methods are still the only way of evaluating the most complex industrial design problems. Currently, however, a young French company has come up with a totally digital approach that combines haptic technologies with virtual reality concepts. A spin-off of the atomic energy commission (CEA) formed in 2001, Haption has developed a family of haptic robot arms known as Virtuose. Managing Director, Jerome Perret, expects the first applications to be running in industry by 2005.
The origin of the word haptics is the Greek word haptein meaning touch. The Haption robotic arm (Plate 1) with its integral force-feedback systems is designed to transmit forces to the user and thereby provide a sensation of touching. It is equivalent of moving the mouse on a PC and seeing it moving on the monitor except that when the user moves the extremity of the robot arm, he actually feels the weight he is trying to move as well as any friction or obstacles that obstruct the movement.
While Haption is not alone in developing haptic arms, the Virtuose family is unique in terms of its performance, according to Jerome Perret. First, he says, it provides force-feedback in six degrees of freedom. Secondly, it can transmit a force of up to 3.5 kg and a torque of up to 3 N m. Furthermore, he claims that the arm's operation is also totally reversible. So, stray inaccuracies and friction have been eliminated and the forces transmitted to the user are directly proportional to the positioning error. "When the user takes hold of the extremity of the arm and exerts a force on...