Acceleration-Level - Mathematical formulas working with the change in joint speeds with respect to time. Integrating accelerations twice provides displacements. See position-level and velocity-level.
Aluminum - A soft, lightweight, silver-white metallic chemical element that is the third most common element. Aluminum is denoted by the symbol Al and has an atomic number of 13, an atomic weight of 26.9815, a melting point of 650°C, and a boiling point of 2450°C. It is highly ductile, malleable, conductive, and resistant to corrosion and wear, and is widely used in alloys for beverage cans, household utensils, aircraft and automobile parts, electrical equipment, and many other products.
Analytical Methods - Purely mathematical methods that do not require iteration.
Autonomous - Operating without pre-programmed behaviors and without supervision from humans.
Biomimetic - Mimicking natural biology.
Blanking - The operation of punching, cutting, or shearing a piece out of stock to a predetermined shape by die cutting the outside shape of a part. Blanking cuts a large sheet of stock into small pieces suitable for the next stamping operation, such as drawing and forming. It is often combined with piercing.
Closed-Form - A problem formulation that does not require iteration for its solution.
Conservative Motion - A path where both the end-effector and the joints repeatedly follow their same respective trajectories.
Curving - The process of adding a constant radius to a flat piece of metal material.
Cut To Length - Refers to a cut off shear that is placed in production lines which shears the part to a specific predetermined length.
Degrees of Freedom - The number of independent variables in the system. Each joint in a serial robot represents a degree of freedom.
Dexterity - A measure of the robot's ability to follow complex paths.
Diffusion welding - A welding process using high temperatures and pressures to form the facing surfaces by solid-state bonding. There is no physical movement, visible deformation of the parts or melting.
Direct Search - A method of solving problems numerically using sets of trial solutions to guide a search. The search is direct because it does not explicitly evaluate derivatives.
Dynamic Model - The study of the forces that cause motion.
Dynamics - The study of the forces that cause motion.
Embossing - A metal forming process for producing raised or sunken designs or relief in sheet material by means of male and female dies, theoretically with no change in metal thickness or by passing sheet or a strip of metal between rolls of the desired pattern.
End-Effector - A device or tool specifically designed to attach to the robot wrist to enable the robot to perform its intended task. The robot uses the end-effector to accomplish a task. The end-effector may be holding a tool, or the end-effector itself may be a tool. The end-effector is loosely comparable to a human's hand.
End-Effector Space - A fixed coordinate system referenced to the base of the robot.
Equality Constraint - A restriction that requires the displacement or motion of the robot to equal a specified value. Equality constraints specify the position and orientation of the robot's end-effector.
Error Function - The error function assigns a single value that represents the difference between the desired and actual values of one or several dependent variables.
Fixed Automation (Hard Automation) - An automated, electronically controlled welding system for simple, straight or circular welds. These systems are mainly used for large production runs where little flexibility is required.
Fully Constrained Robot - A robot with as many independent joints as there are equality constraints on the placement of the end-effector.
Hard Tooling - Used to make high volume parts of one configuration of part design.
Inequality Constraint - A restriction that limits the value of a dependent or independent variable. Inequality constraints limit the robot's joint travels (joint limits), joint speeds (speed limits), and torques, (torque limits).
Intermittent Weld - A series of welds at intervals along a joint.
Inverse Kinematics - A procedure which determines where the end-effector needs to be placed to reach a particular point in space. The procedures use mathematical algorithms along with sensors to determine the desired location of the point in space.
Iteration - Repeatedly applying a series of operations to progressively advance towards a solution.
Jacobian - The matrix of first-order partial derivatives. For robots, the Jacobian relates the end- effector velocity the joint speeds.
Joint Space - A coordinate system used to describe the state of the robot in terms of its joint states. Inverse kinematics may also be thought of as a mapping from end-effector space to joint space.
Kinematic Influence Co-efficients - These coefficients describe the total influence the N input joints have on the motion of the robot and allow a direct statement of the complex and coupled nonlinear differential equations controlling the response of the system.
Kinematics - Kinematics refers to the position, velocity and acceleration of an object or group of objects. When a group of objects are connected they are said to form a kinematic chain. The kinematic chain uses the concept of a family hierarchy to establish rules of motion.
LaGrange Multipliers - A mathematical technique for transforming equality constraints into performance criteria, thus expressing a constrained problem as an unconstrained problem.
Linearly Dependent - A correspondence between quantities or functions that can be described by simply adding, subtracting, or multiplying a scalar.
Manipulator - In the robot welding field, a manipulator is a mechanical device, consisting of a number of axes used to manipulate the work piece to the optimal welding position.
Metal Stamping - Stamping is a term used to refer to various press forming operations including coining, embossing, blanking, and pressing. Forming metals apply pressure to the surface of a metal, usually a strip or sheet. The operations most commonly associated with stamping are blanking, piercing, forming, and drawing. These operations are done with hard tooling.
MIG Welding - MIG stands for Metal Inert Gas Welding. This is often referred to as wire-feed welding. MIG welding is a commonly used in the high deposition rate welding process. During the welding process, wire is continuously fed from a spool. MIG welding is sometimes referred to as a semi-automatic welding process.
Normalize - Scaling a number of factors so that they will be of similar magnitudes.
Notching - A metalworking operation in which the punch removes material from the edge or corner of a strip or blank or part.
Numerical Methods - Iterative methods of solving problems on a computer. Numerical methods may have an analytical basis or they may involve heuristics. Optimization - calculating the independent variables in a function so as to generate the best function value for a given set of conditions. Optimization usually involves maximizing or minimizing a function.
Pendant (teach pendant) - A hand-held unit linked to the control system with which a robot can be programmed or moved.
Performance Criteria - Measures based on kinematic and dynamic models of the robot useful for evaluating the state of the robot.
Plant Description - A kinematic and dynamic model of the robot.
Position-Level - Mathematical formulations working with the joint displacements. See acceleration-level and velocity-level.
Press Braking - A metal forming process that uses an open-frame single-action press used to bend, blank, corrugate, curl, notch, perforate, pierce, or punch sheet metal or plate. This is an extremely common metal fabricating process.
Pseudoinverse - The simple method of inverting a matrix that is not square. As commonly applied to redundant robots, the pseudoinverse minimizes the two-norm of the joint speeds.
Punching - The process of forming metal components using a punch. The punch is usually the upper member of the complete die assembly and is mounted on the slide or in a die set for alignment (except in the inverted die).
Redundancy - More independent variables than constraints.
Repeatability - The variability of the end-effector's position and orientation as the robot makes the same moves under the same conditions (load, temp, etc.)
Resolved-Rate - An extremely simple inverse kinematics method at the velocity-level. Scale is changing magnitude by linear operation (i.e. multiplying by a scalar). Self-motion is the robot's ability to move its intermediate links while holding the placement of the end-effector constant.
Robot - A reprogrammable multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through variable programmed motion for performance of a variety of tasks.
Roll Forming - A process that takes metal sheet, usually coils, and passes it through a series of roller dies that progressively form the metal into the required profile or shape. The roll forming process can save end-users money since some operations, typically considered as secondary, can be combined in the roll forming operation. Roll forming is a continuous bending operation in the metal forming process, when sheet or strip metal is plastically deformed along a linear axis by being passed through a series of roller dies and progressively shaped to the desired contour.
Semiautomatic welding - The equipment only controls the electrode wire feeding. The welding torch movement is controlled by hand.
Serial Robot - A serial robot is a single chain of joints connected by links.
Shearing - A cutting force applied perpendicular to material causing the material to yield and break. Shearing is a process for cutting sheet metal to size out of larger stock such as roll stock. Shears are used as the preliminary step in preparing stock for stamping processes, or smaller blanks for CNC presses.
Singularity - A position in the robot's workspace where one or more joints no longer represent independent controlling variables. Commonly used to indicate a position where a particular mathematical formulation fails.
Slitting - A shearing process, but rather than making cuts at the end of a workpiece like shearing, slitting cuts a wide coil of metal into a number of narrower coils as the main coil is moved through the slitter. During the slitting process, the metal coil passes lengthwise through the slitter's circular blades.
Soft Tooling - Used in processes such as CNC turret presses, laser profilers, and press brakes, soft tooling can be easily modified or adjusted, unlike hard tooling.
Statics - The study of forces that do not cause motion.
Stucco embossing - Applies a pebble-like finish etched into the formed metal. This process helps to reduce the amount of light reflecting off the metal, adds strength to the material, and makes the product more esthetically pleasing.
TIG Welding - TIG is short for Gas Tungsten Arc Welding (GTAW). In the TIG welding process, an arc is formed between a non-consumable tungsten electrode and the metal being welded. Gas is fed through the torch to shield the electrode and molten weld pool. TIG is most commonly used in high quality, high precision, welding applications.
Two-Norm - The square root of the sum of the squares. The magnitude of a vector.
Velocity-Level - Mathematical formulations working with the joint speeds. Integrating the joint speeds once provides the displacements. See acceleration-level and position-level.
Welding - The process of permanently joining two or more metal parts, by melting both materials. The molten materials quickly cool, and the two metals are permanently bonded.
Workspace - The maximum reach space refers to all of the points the robot can possibly reach. The dexterous workspace is all of the possible points the robot can reach with an arbitrary orientation. The dexterous workspace is usually a subspace of the maximum reach space.
