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Texas Instruments The Future of Robotics | 5 • Cylindrical. This robot has at least one rotary axis at the base and at least one prismatic axis to connect the links. The rotary axis uses a rotational motion along the axis, while the prismatic axis uses linear motion. Cylindrical robots operate within a cylindrical-shaped work environment. • Polar. Polar robots are also called spherical robots. For these types of robots, the manipulator connects to the base with a twisting axis and a combination of two rotary axes and one linear axis. The axes form a polar coordinate system and create a spherical-shaped work environment. • Selective compliance assembly robot arm (SCARA). Commonly used in assembly applications, this selectively compliant manipulator for robotic assembly is primarily cylindrical in design. It features two parallel axes that provide compliance in one selected plane. • Delta. These spider-like robots are built from jointed parallelograms connected to a common base. A delta robot has three axes for the parallelograms; for the end effector, it can have one to three axes. The parallelograms move a single EOAT in a dome-shaped work area. Heavily used in the food, pharmaceutical, and electronic industries, this robot configuration is capable of delicate, precise movements. Enabling the Next Generation of Robots • The manipulator. The ISO 8373 standard also states: "A machine in which the mechanism usually consists of a series of segments, jointed or sliding relative to one another, to grasp and/or move objects (pieces or tools) usually in several degrees of freedom or axes. A manipulator does not include an end effector." The manipulator is commonly known as the robotic arm. It's the part of the robot that defines how many axes the robot is implementing to achieve the movement required to perform a task. • The teaching pendant. Multifunctional portable equipment used to program and teach an industrial robot. The pendant typically consists of an LCD touch panel, an enable button and an e-stop button. The teaching pendant connects to the robot controller system. • The robotic end-effector. A device connected to the robot "wrist" or end-of-arm tooling (EOAT). The system controller controls the robot's end-effector by using either discrete input/output (I/O) for simple tools or industrial communication protocols for more advanced tools. • Vision and sensors. These parts of the robot can scan the surrounding environment and stop (in the case of an industrial robot) or reduce (in the case of a cobot) a robot's speed when humans approach. Vision/sensing is implemented with light detection and ranging (LIDAR), a radar-based safety area scanner, or 3D cameras. In addition to the safety area scanner, cobots sometimes wear a sensor-based safety skin that stops the robot arm when a human touches it or is in proximity. When designing the building blocks of a robotic system, there are mechatronics, robot functions, and electrical considerations that you need to understand and obtain specifications before beginning the actual design. Now let's discuss some typical considerations when defining the system architecture of a robot. What type of task is the robot supposed to do? Different robot types have distinct advantages depending on the application. The typical types of industrial robots are: • Articulated. This robot design features a rotary axis and can range from simple three-axis structures to 10 or more joints. The manipulator connects to the base with a twisting joint. A rotary axis connects the links in the manipulator. Each axis provides an additional degree of freedom or range of motion. • Cartesian. These are also called rectilinear or gantry robots. Cartesian robots have three linear axes that use the Cartesian coordinate system (x, y, and z). They might have an attached axis that enables rotational movement. Three prismatic joints facilitate linear motion along the axis.