A New Robotic Hand for Automotive Sheet Panels

Abstract

As the market goes to more diversified segments, automotive manufacturing needs to be more flexible in order to adapt to the market changes effectively. Meantime in flexible tooling/clamp design it is not acceptable to sacrifice the production requirements — holding force, working envelop, size, etc. in exchange for higher flexibility. In this paper we present a new innovative robotic hand for sheet panel applications for automotive body assembly. The new robotic mechanism of the hand enables the fingers to access sheet panels in different locations and orientations, while providing large and consistent holding force needed during production cycle. The mechanism design and validation tests of first prototype were presented. The results showed that the robotic hand satisfied the basic specifications as an automotive body assembly gripper and could be used in multi-style tools to lower manufacturing cost.