CONTROL SYSTEM DESIGN FOR AUTOMATIC SORTING OF LITHIUMION BATTERY USING MULTIPLE
PARALLEL MANIPULATORS

WANG Panfeng  MEI Jiangping  CHEN Hengjun  ZHAO Xueman  HUANG Tian  WANG Youyu

(School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072)

Abstract: The development of a new production line for robotization and prompting efficiency of lithiumion battery sorting process is presented by using multiple high speed light weight parallel manipulators. The open architecture of hardware and software of the numerical control system is essentially developed based on a distributed control system (DCS) built by using the PXI platform and two multi-axis motion controllers, and also a sorting strategy is developed to achieve the task equilibrium and the shortest movement space. Otherwise, some crucial motion control techniques such as high speed data buffering, high speed data synchronization using notifiers and high speed breakpoints capture and output, etc, are investigated and applied to this system to improve the sorting efficiency of a single machine and the cooperation ability of multi-machine. This system is tested and controlled by integrating techniques based on database communications, which shows the validity of the proposed scheme for network control of multi-robot. This system is designed in such a way that enables high information integration, high sorting efficiency, high reliability and is successfully used in battery sorting, it is the first successful application of parallel manipulator for rapid and automatic sorting of batteries in China.

Key words: Battery sorting  Parallel manipulator  Distributed control system

CLC No: TP241

国家高技术研究发展计划(863计划, received in revised form 2005AA420080)和国家自然科学基金(50375106)资助项目. Received 20061123, received in revised form 20070603