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June 2011
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Robotic engineers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation (IPA) believe they hold the key to electricity generation.
 The IPA team is working with Desertec, a consortium whose big idea is building gigantic solar-thermal plants in the desert.
Dr Andreas Pott, leader of the IPA team, states that his team has been working on combining the power of a crane with the speed and accuracy of a robot.
"Our IPAnema robot consists almost entirely of cables and winches," explains Pott. "Held between the cables, which are controlled by the winches with the aid of a computer, is the tool, known as the end effector.
"In the past, it was hard to predict what the result would be when the actuators were moved, but now we are able to give commands to the winches in a completely synchronised way, thanks to computer modelling."
The demonstrator robot is five metres high and has footprint of nine by seven metres – massive but far too small for the Desertec Project. Pott estimates that this robot would have to be the size of a football pitch, but makes the point that, unlike cranes that must move slowly, due to their swinging loads, IPAnema can accelerate quickly in full control irrespective of size and scale.
The actuator drum contained within the winch produces force that is transmitted through the cable over long distances, he says. These high forces can be used for both heavy loads and for speed simply by changing the gear box between operations.
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Author
Brian Tinham
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