Institute Develops Robots to Work In Most Grueling Climates

摘要

The Sahara Desert and the South Pole, in Antarctica, are home to the most unforgiving environments in the world. To save people from having to labor outdoors in such inhospitable climates, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing, Engineering, and Automation, in Stuttgart, Germany, is developing robots that can do the work for them. The institute is developing a 100-ton industrial parallel kinematic device that it calls IPAne-ma to construct a 2,270 sq mi solar farm in the Sahara, the world's largest hot desert. Like the Skycam that hovers over the field during National Football League games, the robot relies on cable, in this case 2,000 ft of polyethylene cable strung from four mobile towers. A box with jaws built for gently grasping 40 ft long solar reflectors is suspended from the cables and serves as the "end effector." Motor-driven winches rap- idly wind and unwind the eight cables that control the suspended end effector, rotating the box on all three axes. Force sensors attached to the winch and the end effector synchronize the winch motors to within 2 ms and track the effector's movement in space within millimeters.