Atro Robot

New "ATRO" modular robots by Beckhoff. Impressive.

Your thoughts.

Lottsa of these little guys out there, these being modular but I'm not certain they're an advantage over a 6 axis in standard configuration. Need to be bigger to get the reach with a decent size payload.

jstolaruk said:

Lottsa of these little guys out there, these being modular but I'm not certain they're an advantage over a 6 axis in standard configuration. Need to be bigger to get the reach with a decent size payload.
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Of course the first response is to cherry pick something wrong with it, like always. But then again, I knew that was coming.

I've never seen 'modular' like that where he basically just screws on the robot arms he needs in a matter of a couple minutes and whoila, done. No wires and cables either, and no separate external robot controller required.

Yes, these robots are for smaller applications, not for throwing engine blocks around.

busarider29 said:

Of course the first response is to cherry pick something wrong with it, like always. But then again, I knew that was coming.

I've never seen 'modular' like that where he basically just screws on the robot arms he needs in a matter of a couple minutes and whoila, done. No wires and cables either, and no separate external robot controller required.

Yes, these robots are for smaller applications, not for throwing engine blocks around.

Click to expand...

You may want to re-read my post, I didn't cherry pick anything wrong with it. I am curious how they handled the forward and inverse kinematics with the module flexibility.

I think the Beckhoff robots look really good. Will have to wait and see about the speed and payload. Also need to see what the cost is but I guess making it 'standardized' and having common parts is supposed to help.

Another question is having to switch to TwinCAT for control. We are still a ladder logic and basic structured text plant. It will take some convincing for us to deviate.

With that said, we spent some time looking at their XTS and X-Planar platform a year ago and were quite impressed. If we can have these robots and the XTS system integrated together then it becomes a more compelling argument to deviate and seriously look at TwinCAT.