A pilot study of dual 7-axis -arm robot in small part assembly application

A dual 7-axis-arm bionic robot with intrinsic safety has been studied in a close-to-real consumer product assembly pilot case for its design concept. The design aims to have the robot to be easily interchanged with a human coworker in agile production scenarios. Within this pilot study, two-hand cooperation for small part assembly, human-robot safety, installation space, productivity, and robot programming effort are evaluated and discussed. The dual arm robot is competent for assembly tasks requiring two-hand cooperation. Its intrinsic safety feature allows side-by-side human-robot collaboration. It has similar size and working range as human being which can minimize production disruption when interchanging with a human coworker. However, its programming method still needs significant improvement to meet fast human-robot interchanging requirement.