Influence of viscoelastic property of compliance material in achieving successful robotic Peg-In-Hole

Abstract

Automation of assembly tasks is an inevitable requirement in the manufacturing industries due to the complex design of the components and the requirement for shorter assembly time. In a real-world assembly environment, the misalignments between the mating parts and the necessity for faster insertion due to the time constraints lead to large reactive forces during the insertion. These reactive forces in turn lead to the failure of the insertion process. The successful insertion depends on the handling of these reactive forces using, Remote Centre Compliance (RCC) devices. The selection of the appropriate RCC devices depends on the estimation of stiffness coefficient and damping factors from the dynamic modelling of the assembly process. In order to select the appropriate compliance device and to improve the success rate of the assembly process, this article analyses the contact forces during the dynamic insertion of a single peg component into a hole component, through simulation of the 3-DOF planar robot-aided compliant peg-in-hole assembly process. Rather than considering only the elastic behaviour modelling of compliant devices, this work includes the viscoelastic property of the compliant material in the assembly modelling. An interactive simulation is carried out using the multibody dynamics simulation software MSC Adams/View and MATLAB which is used to precisely compute the contact forces during the insertion phase of the assembly. The results enable one to choose optimal values for lateral and angular stiffness and damping coefficient for a compliant device to achieve a successful assembly task.