Full Duplex Robot System for Transferring Flat Panel Display Glass

This study addresses the development of a full duplex robotic system for transferring flat-panel display glass. We propose to accomplish this using a bidirectional linear transfer mechanism in place of the conventional rotary transfer mechanism. The developed full duplex robot comprises a driving part that carries the glass panel laterally, vertical part that can be moved up and down by means of a ball screw and linear motion guide arrangement, and hand part that slides by the cylinder of the driving part along the guide rail with a V-guide bearing attached to the bottom of the support. In addition, an alignment part prevents the hand part from derailing and holds the hand part while the driving part moves horizontally. The full duplex robot lifts and drives a glass panel directly while transferring it to the buffer and does not require rotational motion. Therefore, both transferring and stacking are realized with a single device. This device can be used in existing industrial facilities as an alternative to existing industrial robots in current as well as future process lines. The proposed full duplex robot is expected to save considerable amounts of time and space, and increase product throughput.