A Force/Moment Direction Sensor and Its Application in Intuitive Robot Teaching Task

Teach pendant is the most widely used means of robot teaching at present. Despite the difficulties of using the motion command buttons on the teach pendant, it is an economical, robust, and effective device for robot teaching task. This paper presents the development of a force/moment direction sensor named COSMO that can improve the teach pendant based robot teaching. Robot teaching experiment of a six axis commercial robot using the sensor is described where operator holds the sensor with a hand, and move the robot by pushing, pulling, and twisting the sensor in the direction of the desired motion. No prior knowledge of the coordinate system is required. The function of the COSMO sensor is to detect the presence of force and moment along the principal axes of the sensor coordinate system. The transducer used in the sensor is micro -switch, and this intuitive robot teaching can be implemented at a very low cost.