We already anticipated this a few months ago, and just in the last few weeks Kawasaki Robotics presented 'Green Robotics, for a sustainable future'. For all intents and purposes, welcome to the world of green and sustainable robotics, where energy efficiency drives innovation.
The brand has long been on an innovation path to improve energy efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of its solutions, thus contributing to the transition towards a greener and more sustainable economy and industry.
"Green robotics, for a sustainable future" with its vision of sustainable automation, stands at the centre of a landscape where rising energy costs and the increasing importance of sustainability are driving customers from all sectors to look for highly efficient robotics solutions and systems.
The leadership of the Japanese giant is, once again, confirmed: Kawasaki Robotics robots are not only outperforming other brands in terms of efficiency but are constantly improving their performance.
From 2015 to date, in fact, the average energy improvement is 25%, allowing optimal use of the most advanced technologies and a significant reduction in energy consumption.
No compromise: maximum performance and efficiency
The E03 controller is one of the main applications, to date installed exclusively on palletising robots, that saves between 30% and 40% energy. This controller exploits 'regenerative braking' by recovering kinetic energy from the motors during braking and converting it into the energy regeneration unit, which is then returned to the grid (3kW continuous and 20 kW peak).
In terms of technical details, the E03 controller has an integrated inverter that converts the robot's direct current into a 60 Hz alternating voltage and returns the energy to the commercial power supply. The regeneration power can vary depending on the robot model, operating speed and load mass.
Kawasaki Robotics has already been introduced to the market, at the same time as the new BXP series and the new RS025N robot, the F controller: a true upgrade of the E controller, offering even better performance. The new F controller will replace the current E controller on the entire Kawasaki range in the coming months.
The data and benchmarks collected during the test period clearly show the high efficiency: examples were taken of several robot series that are particularly popular in industrial automation, such as the BX series (handling and welding robots, heavy loads), the RS series (handling robots for small to medium loads) and the CP series (robots dedicated to palletising). The application of the F controller reduced energy consumption by 15% in the BX and RS, and 10% in the CP, respectively, with a further 30% energy saving thanks to the energy regeneration function.