Available online at www.ijmcmr.com Trigin Publisher Int. J. of Mechanical Computational and Manufacturing Research, Vol. 2. No. 1, (2013), 1 – 5, ISSN: 2301-4148 1 Corresponding author : msf_hussin@yahoo.com (Hussin, M.S. Firdaus) Copyright © 2013. Trigin Publisher. All rights reserved. ICID: 1049206 (Index Copernicus) Robotics Application in Arc Welding – A Review on Current Progress Hussin, M.S. Firdaus 1 , Daut, A. Shahril 2 , Jufriadi 2 1 Mechanical and Manufacturing Department, Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Serdang, Malaysia 2 Universiti Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia France Institute, Bangi, Selangor Abstract: Robotics applications in industry have shown incredible growth to the bright future. By using robots, quick return on investment is a certainty, resulting in robotics application in most of the developed countries. Development of robotic in arc welding technology has widely diversified in terms of design and modeling, control system and sensing ability. The current trend for robotics arc welding applications in these categories is reviewed. Results show that developments in robotics application are affected by a lot of factors such as speed, flexibility, mobility, compactness, navigation, localization, and mobile platform. Highly developed system with characteristics of effective human decision making became favorable and has initiated an interesting intervention since the system is controlled by complicated neural network brain. Keywords: Robotics arc welding; control system; design and modeling; sensing ability 1 INTRODUCTION The importance of robotics to mankind has led to intensive research for over past decades. Market demands, environmental conservation, industrial automation, and personal services are among the major factors contributing to rapid evolution in robotics application. Recently, robots are used in automotive industry, military system, medicine, agriculture, aerospace, education, and entertainment. The level of competitiveness among robot manufacturers is very high in order to produce more productive, high-performance, cost effective and flexible robots. The demand for dynamic system for robotics application in arc welding has become greater in order to fulfill current industrial requirements. Keeping pace with that, there are advances in a lot of aspects such as seam tracking control system, playback ability, path planning control and the most notable is the trend towards intelligence robotics system [1]. Latest robotics inventions are great for certain narrowly specialized applications, but lack the flexibility needed to perform many of the tasks that come easily to humans or animals. Popularity of modern robots in science fiction for instance C3-PO in Star Wars indicates that the idea of having intelligent autonomous companion robot is possible [2]. Robotics technology in arc welding is synonym with industrial world. The application in welding emphasizes criteria such as consistency in quality, repeatability, and high speed with accuracy. In this paper, the investigation on current developments and applications of robotics arc welding in terms of design, control system, and sensing ability are summarized. 2 CURRENT TREND FOR ROBOTICS ARC WELDING Father of robotics, George Charles Devol has created the first industrial robots in 1954 [3]. Industrial robot continued to evolve and is directly influenced by the development of computer and massive production demand. At this time, development of arc welding robot in terms of design, control system and sensing ability are seen among engineers as potential areas because it will give highly positive impact to the whole production. Design is in general defined as the establishment of a new algorithm wherein mathematical equation describes the physical parameters setup of the robot [4]. The most important part in arc welding process is the arc itself. Welding process consists of two types of control system which are manual control and automatic control [4]. There are a lot of differences between using automatic control and manual control in welding process that influence primary things such as in product quality level, number of production, error occurrences, hazardous working environment and total production costs. Another important consideration in improving arc welding robot system is sensing ability [4]. Sensor that is integrated in the central welding system will convert the information from parameters involved into quantitative data such as digital signal, voltage and current. 2.1 Design and Modeling An example of automated welding process was the work done by Lima et al who used structure for electrode voltage decrement in order to detect temperature change during the process [5]. As a result, the decided value of arc voltage for the welding process becomes more accurate. Creating control for right torch angle is also the important factor in ensuring high quality welding. The study by Silva et al. has established a parallel structure robot where their axes were independent to each other [6]. Therefore if any defect happened at particular axis, it would not influence the other axes, avoiding unnecessary use of high accuracy actuator. Damages will not spread to other axes, resulting in lower maintenance cost. Previously, Rubnovitz et al has used offline programming system in