Development of Delta Robot for Pick and Place on Moving Conveyor

This paper deals with Development of 3-DOF Delta robot to pick and place a object from moving conveyor. The delta robot (a parallel arm robot) was invented in the early 1980s by a research team led by Professor Raymond Clavel at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland). After a visit to a chocolate maker, a team member wanted to develop a robot to place pralines in their packages. The purpose of this new type of robot was to manipulate light and small objects at a very high speed, an industrial need at that time. The main idea of pick and place robot is to carry out the operations in minimum time and also be cost efficient. The project involves kinematic and dynamic modelling of the robot. The kinematic parameters, involving the lengths of the bicep and forearm, are calculated based on the work volume requirements and the dynamic parameters, involving the motor torque and speed. Delta robot is as an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, and multipurpose programmable in three or more axis. A Parallax system is developed to make a Delta robot pick and place parts on a moving conveyer. To achieve motion planning of the Delta robot under a control of stepper motor, forward and backward kinematics of the Delta arms is derived at first. Then, the stepper program is developed in PLC to perform the angular motion attached to the arms. Finally, product sensing and motion controller movements are integrated into one system to perform the pick and place of the products in the conveyor automatically.