Publication: Wireless communication module for tetherless gripper using zigbee communication protocol
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Date
2023-08
Authors
Lee, Jian Sheng
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Abstract
Industry 4.0 strives to address the challenge of increasing the production of services and products while facing limited natural resources. The goal is to achieve this without compromising the environment and social stability. However, one obstacle in the progress of fully automated manufacturing, specifically assembly lines, is the requirement to change the grippers on robotic arms. The pick-and-place operation is crucial in assembly lines, and different types of grippers are needed for products with a wide range of components, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. To overcome this, the concept of tetherless grippers has been introduced, aiming to revolutionize the gripper exchange system. Tetherless grippers use wireless signal and wireless power transfer technologies instead of cables. The current method of using ZigBee modules has some drawbacks, such as the string concatenation method requiring more bandwidth to transmit the same amount of useful information. It also lacks standard frame format encapsulation for anti-data-corruption and can only communicate between one end device and multiple components or multiple end devices and one component. The objectives of this project are to develop and validate a payload format that enables digital read and write, analog read and write, and servo motor control using the XBee's "64-bit Transmit Request" and "64-bit Receive Packet" API types for one coordinator and two end devices. The project also aims to implement and validate ZigBee wireless communication in the UR5 robotic arm and tetherless grippers through a pick-and-place demonstration. The payload format successfully performs servo motor control, digital output toggling, analog
output amplitude, and reading from digital and analog inputs. The signal RSSI averages at 36dBm, which is a strong signal within the robot workspace. Moreover, the transmission success rate is 100% in an uncontrolled electromagnetic environment with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AM and FM radio. Additionally, the project successfully demonstrates the pick-and-place operation using tetherless grippers with the ZigBee communication protocol.