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Isochronic AG

Multitasking reaches robots

The everyday work of stationary pick-and-place industrial robots is not particularly diverse. They always face the same challenge: chaos on one side, order on the other. The robots’ task is to transform chaos into order. They do this millions of times and often in three-shift operation. They take freshly baked cookies from the assembly line and place them in boxes, they always find the right magazine for electrical components, and they pick out the recyclable components from waste.

The established systems for pick-and-place robots are called gantry and delta robots. The latter is a Swiss invention, developed in 1985 by Raymond Clavel at the EPFL. In recent decades, the systems have been continuously optimized all around the globe, so that today virtually no significant improvements are possible.

Robots alright, but different

The founders of Isochronic AG, a young Swiss industrial company based in Denges – again near EPFL – set out to overcome the limiting factors of current robotics. A robot today can either carefully pick up a part/object, move it or set it down, but it cannot do two of these things simultaneously. Since most of a robot’s movements are along the same trajectories, faster movement along these major axes would also be useful. Finally, the robot arm is usually needed on the surface of a rectangle, but due to the existing mechanics the available working space often does not correspond to these requirements but to a partial area of a sphere or a cylinder.

To overcome these limitations, the founders of Isochronic around CEO Melvin Haas have developed a new system. It no longer moves parts sequentially, but in parallel – in other words several items at the same time instead of just one. At the heart of the isochronic industrial robots is a robust and compact mechanical system; the engineers have shifted the complexity to the intelligent automatic control system. The new system differs from existing ones in two ways: first, the robot no longer has an arm with a single pick head, but a wide main beam on which one to four pairs of rails are mounted. On these rails several pick heads can be active simultaneously.

The carrier thus resembles a train station through which the pick heads move like trains. They can travel simultaneously on different rails side by side in one direction, or in opposite directions, without any risk of collision. Secondly, the entire main beam is not only parallel/transverse movable, but also horizontally rotatable thanks to rotating suspensions. These two innovations – multiple pick heads and rotating suspension – allow the robot to be active at two points simultaneously. One of the pick heads can even remain in one place while another one moves to several targets in succession.

Compact and fast production lines

The carrier thus resembles a railroad station through which the pick heads move like trains. They can travel simultaneously on different rails side by side in one direction, or in opposite directions, without any risk of collision. Secondly, the entire main beam is not only movable on a parallel/transverse basis, but is also rotatable horizontally thanks to rotating suspensions. These two innovations – multiple pick heads and rotating suspension – allow the robot to operate at two points simultaneously. One of the pick heads can even remain in one place while another one moves to several targets in succession.

A single isochronic industrial robot is many times more powerful than conventional robots, depending on the application, and thus delivers immediate and direct customer benefits. On the one hand, fewer robot systems are required for the same activity. On the other, it opens up a great deal of scope for future developments. Since the new robots require less mass to be moved, energy and operating costs are reduced. The compact size of the systems helps save space, so existing workshops can be used more efficiently. The integrated control system also saves considerable time compared with the manual programming of conventional robot types. The market potential of Isochronic’s robots is therefore considerable.

At AUTOMATICA, the leading trade fair for intelligent automation and robotics, which will be held in Munich in June 2022, Isochronic will present the first industrial prototypes of its robots. Currently, initial pilot projects for novel production lines are being realized. In order to bring isochronic robots into use in very different industries, Isochronic intends to build up a modular product matrix. It is foreseeable that some forty years after the invention of the delta robots, the generation replacing them will again be a development from French-speaking Switzerland.

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