Advantages of Task-Adapted Parallel Robot Systems featuring Modularity and Reconfigurability

This contribution gives a survey of advantages concerning task-adapted parallel robot systems which have been built at the Institute of Machine Tools and Production Technology of the Technische Universität Braunschweig. For this purpose the field of application of parallel structures will be presented before the basic idea of the task-adaptation is clarified. In doing so, different approaches will be shown such as the adaptation of the workspace and the costs of the robot to the specified task, thus enhancing e.g. cost- and resource-efficiency. Moreover, to overcome typical challenges of parallel robots such as high costs and undersized workspaces, different reconfiguration concepts including static and dynamic reconfigurations are presented along with examples. In this context a special static reconfiguration will be shown in detail, in which two already realized robot systems feature a high flexible interchangeability among each other to adapt e.g. accuracy, robustness and costs to the desired task.