With the advancement of intelligence, the use of robot sensors is increasing. There are three main types of intelligent robots: interactive robots, sensor robots, and autonomous robots. Starting from the perspective of anthropomorphic functions, vision, force perception, and touch are the most important and have already entered the practical stage. Hearing has also been greatly developed, and there are also olfactory, gustatory, and sliding senses, corresponding to various sensors. Therefore, the robot sensing industry also constitutes a production and research force.

Sensor technology has become the backbone of the robotics industry. Internal sensors

A product that integrates mechanical and electrical components, such as internal sensors, motors, shafts, or mechanical structures such as arms and wrists, to measure orientation, speed, and force, and complete servo control.

Azimuth (displacement) sensor

There are two types of linear motion sensors: potentiometer type sensors and adjustable transformers. There are three types of angular displacement sensors: potentiometer type, adjustable transformer (rotary transformer), and photoelectric encoder. Among them, photoelectric encoder includes incremental encoder and positive encoder. Incremental encoders are generally used for azimuth servo control with uncertain zero positions. Positive encoders can obtain the instantaneous viewpoint value of the driving axis corresponding to the initial determined orientation of the encoder. When the equipment is under pressure, as long as the reading of each joint encoder is read, the given value of servo control can be adjusted to prevent excessive movement during robot startup.

Speed and acceleration sensors

There are two types of speed sensors for measuring translational and rotational motion speeds, but in most cases, they are limited to measuring rotational speed. The photoelectric pulse type speed sensor uses the derivative of displacement, especially the photoelectric method, to irradiate the rotating disk with light, detect the rotation frequency and number of pulses, and determine the rotating viewpoint. It also uses the disk to make a gap, and through two photodiodes, identifies the angular velocity, i.e. the rotational speed. In addition, there is a speed measuring generator used for speed measurement, etc.

Strain gauges, also known as elastic gauges, are stress sensors used for measuring acceleration. Accelerometers are used to measure the dynamic control signals of industrial robots. Generally, there are methods for deduction based on velocity measurement, known as using a strain gauge to measure the force generated by the acceleration of a mass object, and the following methods:

The force related to the measured acceleration can occur from a known mass. This force can be considered as electromagnetic force or electric force, ultimately simplified as the measurement of current, which is known as servo return sensors. In practice, there can be various oscillating acceleration sensors.

Force sensing sensor

Force sensing sensors are used to measure the three weights of the force acting between two objects and the three weights of the torque. The ideal sensor in robots is a semiconductor stress gauge bonded to compliant components. Detailed examples include metal resistance type force sensors, semi conductive type force sensors, other magnetic pressure type and force sensors manufactured using the principle of string oscillation.

There are also torque sensors (such as using photoelectric sensors to measure torque) and means sensors such as the six small differential transformers from Stanford Research Institute, which can measure the force acting on the wrist in the X, Y, and Z directions and the dynamic torque of each axis.

Due to the long history of robot development, in recent years, AC permanent magnet motors have been widely used as the main method