Next-generation robotic arm aimed at industry
a new robotic arm that is fully mobile, has accuracy that rivals
industrial fixed robot arms and could cost significantly less.
The Flexibot takes the form of an arm, jointed in the middle and at either end, with grippers at either end, that can travel across a grid or chain of sockets and operate effectively from each.
The arm moves along in a manner similar to an inchworm, plugging one end into a socket and then reaching over and plugging into the next. The first end detaches, and the arm is ready to operate from its new position. Using a network of sockets built around a room, the Flexibot can navigate and travel at will, even going up stairs and across ceilings.
Prof Mike Topping, who heads the team that developed the Flexibot, told In-Pharmatechnologist.com that the primary aim was to develop a robot that could be used to help disabled people carry out tasks.
Topping was behind the development of the Handy1, which is already one of the most widely used robots for disabled applications. This is a low-cost device, costing around £4,000 (€6,000), but is pre-programmed and cannot easily be moved around.
The Flexibot was designed to overcome these limitations, but still be in the same pricing bracket. For this reason it has been constructed from readily available off-the-shelf components, a factor which kept the cost of building a prototype at the fairly low level of €65,000. In contrast, industrial robots can cost several hundred euros per machine.
The Staffordshire team's primary focus is on tools for the disabled, the likely broad appeal of the Flexibot in industrial applications has spurred them to try to get partners on board - ideally a robotics specialist firm - to bring the technology to large-scale production. The resulting economies of scale will hopefully make it easier to produce the robot at a price affordable by healthcare providers such as the UK National Health Service, said Topping.
Robots are already used in the pharmaceutical industry in manufacturing and research settings, for example for picking individual compounds out of the hundreds of thousands that may be storied in a compound library or manipulating microplates in drug screening.
The Flexibot represents a more flexible alternative to current industrial robots, said Topping. Several arms can work simultaneously from a socket network, and their mobility - as well as the ability to be programmed to conduct multiple tasks - means that one can do the work of several fixed robots.
The prototype is 1.1m in length, is accurate to within one tenth of a millimetre and can pick up a weight of 2.8kg. It is scaleable, so could be designed in bespoke dimensions to fulfill a particular task.
Staffordshire University has appointed Davidsons, a leading London-based intellectual property consultancy to manage the process of taking the invention to the next stage of its commercial development.
Geoffrey Davidson, the head of the company, told In-Pharmatechnologist.com that there are various ways to being the technology towards commercialization. One is to partner with a robotics specialist or companies focusing on industrial handling systems, but another could be to work directly with the end-users on specific applications.
More details about the Flexibot are available on www.robotic-arm.com.
