Robot assembly system for LCD TV using cooperative force control

At present, the assembly of flat panel displays and other appliances still depends greatly on manual work. Under these circumstances, in preparation for labor shortages in the future and for the improvement of cost competitiveness, the need for automation of assembly processes is increasing more and more obviously. Issues in the assembly of appliances include the grasping and handling of materials that have low machining accuracy and the teaching work related to assembly in a process. To respond to these problems, we have developed a robot assembly system equipped with a cooperative force control function that uses input from force sensors to operate two SCARA type robots in a cooperative mode. This paper describes the hardware and cooperative force control of the system that we developed. It also reports the verification of the performance in the assembly of actual television set component parts using the developed robot system.