The four family companies represented by ABB, Yaskawa Electric, KUKA, etc. undoubtedly represent the top level of the current robot industry.
However, the achievements of the four major family companies that occupy more than 70% of the market share of China's robot industry in various industrial markets are not only the success of a single company, but also the impact of upstream components on robot performance is very critical.
▍ High-performance sensors play a huge role
Sensor is an important part of the robot, in principle, the sensor can be based on the measured information, through a certain regular signal transformation, it is converted into the electrical signal or other forms of information required by the robot, and complete the output to meet the requirements of information in the acquisition, transmission, recording and control of industrial intelligent processes.
Force sensors are a key component of robot force perception. ABB, Yaskawa, KUKA and other enterprises of robots, can be widely used in bionics, medical, grinding, assembly, grasping and human-machine integration and other fields, continue to develop drag teaching, human-computer interaction and other functions, in addition to their own high flexibility, high automation and other advantages, the role of force sensors can not be ignored.
Taking automotive body weld grinding as an example, this application has always been a high-end grinding application recognized by integrators, requiring a high degree of intelligence of the equipment, good force control effect, and stable and reliable work.
A large part of the reason why these automotive industry integrators mostly choose the robots of the four majors is that with the help of high-performance force sensors, ABB, KUKA and other companies can easily achieve the improvement of robot performance such as diameter accuracy, movement speed, cycle time, programmable design, etc., and greatly improve the quality, efficiency and reliability of production. This is very important for the automotive production line.
Taking ABB robot as an example, in similar automotive weld grinding applications, ABB robot introduces environmental forces into the control loop based on the interaction between the manipulator and the environment, improves the controllable contact force and contact stability between the robot and the outside world, so that the robot can make contact movements without collision and shutdown.
From many similar cases from ABB, KUKA, Yaskawa and other companies, it can be found that high-performance force sensors are indispensable.
So behind such excellent force sensors in KUKA, ABB and other companies, who is the hero?
▍ Four domestic brands behind everyone
Thanks to Midea's acquisition of KUKA, some of KUKA's partner suppliers have gradually surfaced.
Digging deep into KUKA, ABB's force sensor partners, you can find that this company called SRI, from the enterprise registration information, is actually a mainland enterprise - Yuli Instruments, the founder of which is dr. Huang Yue, the former chief engineer of FTSS in the United States. Currently, FTSS is a global leader in the field of multi-dimensional force sensors for automotive crash dummies.
In the field of industrial robot applications, three kinds of single-axis force transducers, three-axis force transducers and six-axis force transducers are generally used. At present, the collaborative robots that are hot in the market also use joint torque sensors and six-axis force sensors.
From many data, it can be found that single-axis force transducers and uniaxial torque transducers have many products on the market, but in the early days, because the purchase volume was not large, there was no special design for robot applications, so it has not been strong in terms of ease of use and durability. Since its establishment in 2007, Universal Instruments (SRI) has looked at this field and has continued to deepen its cultivation since then.
Judging from its official website, Yuli Instruments (SRI) has designed and produced a total of 9 series and more than 300 models of multi-axis force sensors over the years, from one axis to six axes, with corresponding product coverage, which can be said to be very deeply rooted in this plate.
From the perspective of application fields, due to the complete range of Yuli instrument products, the product line covers all kinds of torque sensors, data acquisition, force control grinding, etc. In recent years, as robots play an increasingly important role in more manufacturing segments, and grinding, polishing, and deburring are indispensable basic processes in the manufacturing industry, so force-controlled grinding has gradually entered people's vision.
Judging from the many industry application cases launched by the four companies in recent years, the four major enterprises have long formed their own force control and polishing technology routes. For the analysis of ABB and KUKA's force control grinding kit products, it is currently mainly a six-axis force sensor feedback control and adaptive grinding head.
According to some of the published data of Yuli Instruments, with the help of good product quality and pure original innovation that never imitates, SRI's six-axis force sensor has been well applied in ABB, YASKAWA, KUKA, FOXCONN and other international leading robot companies as early as 2012.
Judging from the sales and tax payment of Yuritsu Instruments, SRI's products were once exported to Europe and the United States.
▍ Deeper field expansion
At present, Yuli Instruments is already a global strategic partner of ABB, and the two sides have cooperated with ten series of six-axis force/torque sensors and intelligent floating grinding heads. At the same time, Yuli has also developed a number of standard force control products with ABB and KUKA, and the two sides have also been exploring cooperation and are designing and developing new intelligent force control grinding solutions.
For example, in 2020, Yuli Instruments helped KUKA to cooperate from design to development to launch the Force Control Grinding Integrated Application Package KUKA ready2_grinding, which is an easy-to-integrate overall application package specifically for the grinding process, with axial constant force floating capability, integrated force sensor, displacement sensor and inclination sensor, can real-time perception of grinding force, floating position and grinding head attitude and other parameters, can automatically compensate the robot grinding attitude.
Multi-axis force sensors for Yuli robots and automation, measuring range from 25N to 600KN, diameter from 15mm to 1500mm, thickness from 5mm to 110mm, the output form is diverse, including digital and analog output, suitable for a variety of complex industrial environments, underwater force measurement and other environments.
According to the official website of Yuli, SRI's products have been well used in many regions such as the United States, Germany, Britain, Italy, France, Spain, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and mainland China. In 2015, it obtained the CNAS certification of the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment.
With the acquisition of KUKA by Midea, some joint development activities have also been carried out in China. On April 28, 2021, the "Yuli-KUKA Intelligent Grinding Laboratory" and the "Yuli-itest Joint Innovation Laboratory" held a grand launching ceremony at the headquarters of Yuli Instruments, No. 176 Gaoji Road, Songjiang District, Shanghai.
Yuli and KUKA revealed at the ceremony that in the future, the two sides will provide integrated solutions for integrators and end customers in the robot industry from grinding tools, processes, methods to systems, and promote the development of the robot grinding industry.
At that time, in addition to representatives of KUKA and Yuli Instruments, savoy passenger cars, Shanghai motor vehicles, and people from the automotive, testing and other industries attended the event.
Automotive industry guests attended the launch ceremony of a laboratory cooperation between a sensor company and a robotics company, and publicly expressed their desire to continue to develop intelligent test equipment, which revealed very intriguing information.
Continuing to dig deeper, we can see that the force sensor products exported by Yuli Instruments are not only used in robotics and automation, but also widely used in automotive crash testing, automotive durability testing, biomechanics and general test equipment.
Why does Yuli's field cover the automotive field? It starts with a story that is older.
▍ Subdivision leader in multiple fields
More than 10 years ago, the sales of robotic force sensors were not large, and the automotive industry was the main customer. The biggest constraint on force sensors is that for most applications, the cost of force control technology is too high.
At that time, the problem of domestic force sensors being stuck by foreign card necks was very serious, due to the serious lag in the core manufacturing process technology of the early sensors, which led to the difficulty of breaking through high-end sensor products.
Although the domestic sensor industry has a complete product coverage, it lacks the competitiveness of the high-end market. Many enterprises are small in scale, poor product quality, weak in innovation ability, and some are only agents of foreign products or assembly, without real core technology.
HUANG Yue, president of SRI, saw this opportunity.
For more than a decade before 2007, Huang Yue had been engaged in the design and development of six-dimensional force sensors in the United States, and he was the chief engineer of the world's leading automobile collision dummy, the United States FTSS (now Humanetics ATD).
How good were Humanetics at the time? It is no exaggeration to say that it is a monopoly leader in the segment of crash testing in the traditional automobile era.
In order to ensure driving safety, cars often have to undergo safety crash tests, and a "dummy" is placed on the driver's seat during the test. This dummy is mainly used to obtain data on the impact of different parts of the impact, so its body is full of bionic structures and sensors.
There are dozens of sensors on dummies of different weights, sizes, and designs, and at the price of force sensors at that time, a dummy costs millions of yuan, which is more expensive than most of the cars tested.
In this crash test dummy market, The American Humanetics occupies a monopoly position, monopolizing more than 90% of the market.
In this very small and inconspicuous "dummy" manufacturing market, due to the lack of overall performance of the high-end force sensor of its core, the mainland was once in a situation of being "stuck in the neck".
In 2007, Dr. Huang Yue returned to China to found Yurik Instruments, becoming the only enterprise in Mainland China with the production capacity of multi-axis force sensors for automobile collision dummies. At the same time, the multi-dimensional force sensor was introduced into the field of automobile durability testing, and cooperation with car companies such as SAIC and Volkswagen began a journey of Yuli and the automotive industry hand in hand, overcoming the problem of being stuck necked by foreign countries.
Yuli Instrument's main multi-axis force sensor and data acquisition system has also begun to expand and cover the robot and automation industries with China becoming the largest application market for robots, and has achieved good results.
After crossing from the automotive field to the robot industry, Yurik Instruments has launched a variety of six-axis force transducers, robot joint torque transducers and iGrinder intelligent floating grinding heads, accumulating a good reputation in the industry.
From the product point of view, Yuli's research and development is very targeted, and this company is very good at extracting goals from demand.
At the beginning of the polishing development cooperation between Yuri and Yaskawa, Mr. Nishikawa, then the general manager of Yaskawa Electric China, suggested that Dr. Huang Yo just provide a six-dimensional force sensor, and Yaskawa's team would do the force control grinding algorithm. Dr. Huang Yu politely declined and plunged into a variety of robot grinding applications.
Through the experience summary of different projects, Yuli also realized that the difficulty of using robots to achieve polishing is very high, and it is difficult for robots that simply use force sensors to meet such complex industrial needs.
Through a large number of cooperative explorations, Finally, Yuli pioneered the integration of force control, position transmission control and electrical servo technology, and successfully launched the iGrinder intelligent floating grinding head, which solved the process problem of grinding. High-precision compensation and easy-to-use control not only improve the grinding process effect, but also ensure the consistency of the grinding. Nowadays, iGrinder intelligent floating grinding head has also become one of Yuli's "home products".
For example, in the research application of intelligent prosthetics in the United States, Yuli's six-dimensional force sensor has almost become the standard.
The reason is that Yuli adheres to the thin and light demand of the bionic sensor on the sole of the foot, and finally developed a six-dimensional force sensor with a thickness of only 9mm, which is also the thinnest six-dimensional force sensor known to the global business community. In the field of medical rehabilitation, the surgical robots of Medtronic, the world's largest medical device company, also use sensors produced by Yuli.
▍Deep ploughing to control industry technology, steadily promote the wind to rise
The reporter interviewed the engineers of Yuli Instruments and found that most of them were not good at words but had sharp engineering thinking, and it was always a treasure to talk about the robot's six-dimensional force sensor and force control polishing. The professional and sophisticated feeling impressed the reporter.
As Dr. Huang Yue, President of Yuli Instruments, said at the inauguration ceremony of "Yuli-KUKA Intelligent Polishing Laboratory" and "Yuli-itest Joint Innovation Lab": "We don't do ppt labs, only do original, never imitate, so that we can really do something." ”
In the future, with the continuous enlargement of the Dividend of the Chinese Market, enterprises such as Yuli that are rooted in and specialized in the industry field will inevitably gain more and more favor with their strong technical strength, and the development of enterprises in many fields is worth looking forward to.
On April 13th, Mr. Tang Mingfu, Manager of Yurik Instrument Engineering Department, was invited to the Robot Lecture Hall to share the grinding and application of robot intelligent force control, and he will focus on analyzing the characteristics of the two force control methods of six-dimensional force sensor feedback control and iGrinder intelligent buoyancy control and introduce a large number of practical cases.
Interested partners can scan the QR code below to get the link between the live broadcast room and the way to join the group