Problem
This 7-axis robot arm was installed on a mobile crawler platform and is used in lorries in the tire industry. Thanks to a sophisticated gripper, vision system and artificial intelligence developed by the Michelin study and research center in Ladoux, the robot arm identifies and grabs the tires and places them on a conveyor belt under the robot, which transports the tire to its processing area.
In manual mode (radio controlled), the platform can travel with the robot in all directions, with the destination being the loading/unloading dock. Once on the dock, it switches to autonomous mode. However, when working in a narrow trailer of a lorry, the robot can only perform limited forward and backward movement and can only rotate slightly to recenter. Especially for the routing of the numerous power, control and pneumatic cables from outside into the trailer where the robot works, this resulted in a space problem. Alternatives such as a battery for energy supply or a motor were out of the question due to size and weight restrictions of the robot.
Instead, an energy chain system was chosen which, with a travel of at least 14m, a speed of 12m/min and acceleration of 1m/s2, is pulled horizontally behind the robot over concrete and the wooden or plastic formwork of the lorry trailer. The small difference in height between dock and trailer is also a challenge and required the most wear-free cable guidance possible. Since the chain would be a bit off-center from the mobile platform's orbit, it needed to be able to accept twisting/deformation.