Modeling of large scale solar cell handling robot with belt-driven flexible arms

To increase the competition of the solar energy collection system, the size of the solar panel module during the manufacturing process is being increased continuously. As the size of the solar panel increases, the size of the robot to handle the panel increased also. The change in scale of the robot inevitably results in the amplification of the adverse effect of the flexure. The main source of the flexure in the large scale solar cell panel handling system is the long and thin fork fingers of the hand and the solar cell panel. In addition, the belt-driven actuator system used by most of the large scale panel handling robot is another significant source of the vibration. In this paper, the flexible multi body dynamic model of a large scale solar cell panel handling robot, which is being designed and constructed with the help of Kyung Hee University, is developed. The belt-driven system in the robot is also modeled as flexible system and included in the robot to represent the actual vibration characteristics of the actuator system.