Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (AIDC, 漢翔航空工業), the nation’s largest civilian and military aircraft manufacturer, yesterday said it has formed an alliance with Mirle Automation Co (盟立) to develop robotics and tap into the industrial automation market.
The two companies are to jointly develop high-precision robotic arms based on the etherCAT-Motion Intelligence Orchestration (eMIO) control platform developed by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI).
To meet the stringent standards of the aerospace sector, the partnership aims to improve the capabilities of locally made robotic arms to work with heavier loads, as well as enhance their precision by 20-fold to achieve a deviation of less than 0.25 millimeters.
Prompted by major aerospace customers, suppliers across the world have begun to shift toward using robotic arms to overcome the lack of flexibility of conventional five-axis computerized numerical control (CNC) machines, ITRI executive vice president Liu Chun-ting (劉軍廷) said, adding that maintaining movement precision remains a bottleneck for systems and calibration providers of high weight-bearing robotic arms.
Robotic arms are ideal for the aerospace industry, where suppliers face the challenges of producing small volumes of a large variety of components, Liu said.
As opposed to the closed systems sold by foreign solution providers, the eMIO platform allows users to create their control algorithms to ensure that robotic arms achieve the desired motions and torque, while creating continuous sensor data collection achieves continuous improvements in accuracy, the institute said.
AIDC chairman Anson Liao (廖榮鑫) hopes to see the improved robotic arms cut production equipment costs by up to 60 percent and expand the scope of the nation’s aerospace sector to include automated manufacturing.
Mirle Automation president Fang Yu-gang (方玉崗) said that eMIO is expected to improve the precision of locally made robotic arms that are capable of bearing loads of more than 100kg, as their deviation average between 1mm and 10mm, which exceed the tolerance levels for the aerospace industry.
AIDC first-half net income dipped 49.2 percent annually to NT$541 million (US$17.94 million), or earnings per share of NT$0.57.
Mirle Automation’s first-half net income dropped 50.6 percent annually to NT$1.21 billion, or earnings per share of NT$0.62.
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