COMPETENCIES FORMATION OF STUDENTS OF MECHANICS IN THE FIELD OF ROBOTICS

Abstract

One of the main trends of modern industrial production is the increasingly widespread introduction of robots and manipulators into various technological processes for the purpose of partial or complete replacement of human labor. First and foremost, this relates to the harmful human activities where there is air pollution, high temperature, radiation, heavy physical labor, actions requiring, for example, high precision, or if there are multiple monotonous operations. Typically, the disciplines dedicated to robots and manipulators are essential for the students – future specialists in automation of production. But, taking into consideration the high rates of usage of robots in many industries, the rapid growth of their nomenclature and capabilities, as well as the fact that a robot is, first of all, a mechanical system designed to perform mechanical movements, their study should also take place for the students of non-robot technology specialties (Applied Mechanics, Industry Mechanical Engineering, etc.). Obviously, the study of robots and manipulators is closely linked with the discipline Theory of Mechanisms and Machines, since it is necessary to consider, in the first place, the same issues of synthesis and analysis (structural, kinematic, force), accuracy and equilibrium of the mechanisms. Due to the limited number of classroom hours, the question arises as to the choice and justification of both the topics and the time to study each topic. The purpose of the research is to substantiate the necessity and ways of forming the competences of students of mechanics in the design, operation and upgrading of robots and manipulators. The methods of the research: theoretical (analysis of educational and scientific literature on the theory of mechanisms and machines) and experimental (analysis of competencies of students of mechanics in the field of robotics). In this work it is proposed to include the following topics: robot synthesis, their kinematic and dynamic analysis, peculiarities of robot design, as well as issues related to the direct operation of robots: their accuracy, reliability, safety, balancing and the peculiarities of the use of robots in various fields. We suppose, first of all, it is necessary to pay attention to the issues of kinematic and power analysis, since, regardless of what functions this or that robot performs, there are always requirements as for the trajectories of the movements of the links, the speeds and accelerations of the individual points of the units, the forces acting on links in the places of their connections (in kinematic pairs). Despite the fact that in the course of Theory of Mechanisms and Machines the study of the issues of kinematic and power analysis is obligatory, robots and manipulators have features related, primarily, to the fact that the number of degrees of their freedom, as a rule, always more than one unit, unlike most plane mechanisms.