Design and development of a not actively driven modular device for parts feeding and sorting

Abstract

The current paper focuses on developing and designing a not actively driven module for material handling operations in the field of intra-logistic. This device, belonging to the class of systems known as smart surfaces, is planned to be assembled with others to create manipulative arrays. As a novel feature, the reported concept aims to generate the frictional forces required for surface operation avoiding motors and with a simplified design. The article not only presents the design of the concept, but also the analytic models used to describe its operation and handling forces. In addition, a characterization of the fundamental parameters and the validation of the mentioned analytic descriptions together with the functioning itself are reported. As result, the analysis and the measurements presented show a real solution for a not actively driven concept, along with a methodology to characterize it and predict its handling capabilities. Specifically, the validation test proved that the model is able to represent the behavior of the friction forces with relative errors mainly in the range of 10% or lower.