Automated Engine Piston Installation Using Industrial Robots

This paper presents engine piston installation using industrial robots. Because the current manual and hard automation engine piston installation systems are either labour intensive or inflexible and costly, the three-robot and two-robot piston installation systems are developed and investigated. The robotic piston installation process is simulated. A robotic piston stuffing gripper with ring detection is designed to perform the sophisticated stuffing process. Robot force control is used in the cylinder bore finding. The piston stuffing is implemented using a search-finding method based on the force control. The searching method and parameters are discussed. Related future research and development are proposed.