SCARA robot was developed at the SCARA study group that was established in 1978, following a proposal by Professor Hiroshi Makino at Yamanashi University. The robot’s name stands for “Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm”. And just like its name, it has high vertical stiffness and low horizontal stiffness, and the following characteristics:
Can insert parts by low stiffness of horizontal direction.
With the wide range of movement in a space-saving.
Has a compact structure and is easy to manufacture.
Even if the arm is rotated, the orientation of the tip does not change, and then it is easy to control.
Fujitsu participated in the SCARA study group and developed the first (the world’s first) SCARA robot based on the above concept. This first robot was utilized in various evaluations at Makino Robotics Laboratory of Yamanashi University. Fujitsu commercialized this robot (Figure 1, Figure 2) and attempted to expand its application by changing the arm length, and making the clean robot.
Mounting parts on a printed circuit board (Figure 3)
Carrying out tests on mobile telephone
Conveying masks in a clean room and carrying out tests on hard disks (Figure 4)
Based on the evaluation result at SCARA study group, Toshiba and every participant company of the SCARA study group also commercialized this robot and SCARA built the era of industrial robot. Figure 5 shows the SCARA robot in a line for mounting odd-shaped parts to electronic substrates of home appliances at Toshiba. It has multiple hands and so it can simultaneously pick up various types of parts and mount them.
Figure 1: Fujitsu “FAROT-4SB”
Figure 2: Brochure of Fujitsu “FAROT-4SB”
Figure 3: Application of Fujitsu Auto Soldering Device
Figure 4: Application of Fujitsu Disk Auto-Handler
