Autonomous mobile robots can work 24 hours, flexible scheduling and other characteristics at the same time, mobile operating robots can automatically load and unload materials on the basis of handling, open up the material flow and data flow of the whole field, effectively ensure yield and improve production capacity. Controller is the core of mobile robot, it needs to complete positioning, navigation, obstacle avoidance, mapping, identification, tracking and other functions, with rich hardware and software interfaces. In the production environment, it can run alone or realize cooperative scheduling of robot clusters, and support rapid docking with industrial production management system.
However, the precise production conditions of semiconductors also place extremely high demands on mobile robots. First of all, due to the characteristics of the industry, the cleanliness of the mobile robot itself needs to be extremely high. Secondly, wafers in the semiconductor industry are expensive and fragile, which requires that mobile robots must be precise and stable when handling and storing wafers. In addition, there are many semiconductor production processes and concentrated equipment layout, and autonomous mobile robots need to frequently, repeatedly and stably transfer work between the various processes, which requires the robot to have a stable enough operating speed and accurate positioning accuracy to the millimeter level, which puts high requirements on mobile robots.
The autonomous mobile robot creates the corresponding prototype product, which needs to be constantly iterated and upgraded, and finds the best balance between the scene and the product performance. The application of the wafer box handling robot to achieve accurate loading and unloading and handling of the wafer box can save a lot of manpower, reduce the risk caused by the pollution of the dust-free workshop, improve the yield, and avoid the damage caused by manual handling. And reduce most of the operator's ineffective walking, greatly improving the efficiency of autonomous mobile robots.
Combining mobile robots with semiconductor scenarios to achieve extreme performance is not an easy task. To ensure that the wafer box grab and loading and unloading of absolute precision.
The ultrasonic sensor has high sensitivity, strong penetration and weak environmental impact, effectively preventing the situation of the wafer box bumping caused by grasping the stack material, and detecting the situation of manual material grabbing. The end of the gripper is also equipped with the end in-position detection sensor, which detects the fixed state of the wafer box on the gripper in real time during the movement. Once the in-position detection sensor is triggered, the end actuator immediately stops the operation.
In the grasp process, the ultrasonic sensor, visual positioning camera, in-place detector and other sensor modules will carry out continuous real-time monitoring, only when the three modules do not report errors, the robot arm will perform corresponding operations to ensure the stability and safety of the wafer box loading and unloading operation.
In the operation, the stability of the vehicle body with the movement of the wafer box is the key. With strong stand-alone performance, effectively avoid vibration and other conditions during the handling process, while equipped with Lidar, 3D vision, pothole sensors and other detection equipment, can avoid more sudden situations, and ultimately ensure the stability and reliability of driving.
At the same time, the LiDAR, vision, crater detection and other modules of the series are normally closed Settings, and the series will not perform operations when a module is abnormal or cannot be used normally; Only when all modules are in normal operation, the series will perform operations to achieve comprehensive protection. According to the existing situation of the customer site, the series of products also have more specific functional modules to ensure the normal operation of the product and the safety of the material in many cases.
At present, in the core components such as drive controller, dispatching system and excited navigation sensor, international brands occupy the main market, although they can not achieve the direct monopoly of China's mobile market, but can use the key technological advantages to contain Chinese enterprises. During the epidemic period, the supply cycle of foreign core parts has become longer and the price has increased, which has an impact on the on-time delivery of mobile robot projects and corporate profits.
In the long run, upstream cost constraints will continue to affect the level of industry expansion. With the continuous expansion of the scale of China's mobile robot industry, in order to achieve high-quality development, it is necessary to be self-reliant and self-reliant, ensure the autonomy and controllability of the industrial chain and supply chain, and the breakthrough of core component technology has become the top priority. At present, many domestic enterprises are accelerating independent research and development, realizing the iterative optimization of core component technology, and accelerating the localization process.
In addition, machine vision, artificial intelligence and other technologies are closely combined with mobile robots, so that it not only has the ability to accurately detect and position the end, but also has the real-time adjustment ability of its vehicle robot arm and other actuators, this composite robot will bring more space to the future development of the industry.
