Abstract
In manufacturing systems, pick-up operations by vacuum grippers may fail owing to manufacturing errors in an object’s surface that are within the allowable tolerance limits. In such situations, manual interference is required to resume system operation, which results in considerable loss of time as well as economic losses. Although vacuum grippers have many advantages and are widely used in the industry, it is highly difficult to directly monitor the current machine status and provide appropriate recovery feedback for stable operation. Therefore, this paper proposes a method to detect the success or failure of a suction operation in advance by analyzing the amount of outlet air pressure in the Venturi line. This was achieved by installing an air pressure sensor on the Venturi line to predict whether the current suction action will be successful. Through empirical experiments, it was found that downward movements in the z-axis of the vacuum gripper can easily rectify a faulty gripper suction operation. Real-time monitoring results verified that predictive process adjustment of the pick-up operation can be performed by modifying the z-position of the vacuum gripper.
Highlights
Box type II: Box that appears normal in the product quality inspection but is not flat enough to be picked up using a conventional vacuum gripper
A testbed for conducting a pick-up operation using a vacuum gripper with a single suction cup was prepared
The air pressure in the Venturi line was automatically monitored in real time
Summary
As manufacturing systems have become more complicated, the concept of operations and maintenance (O&M) has become important in preventing unforeseen faults and errors and for smooth operations [1,2]. Lin et al (2021) found that O&M investments are continuously increasing in the power plant industry owing to concerns regarding the safe and reliable operation of power plants [3]. O&M is relevant to physical products or systems but to cyber systems as well. In this regard, Furumoto et al (2020) discussed how to assess and prevent cyber risks to achieve reliable ship operation [4]. The prevention of unknown and sudden faults in real time is critical [5,6]
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