Development and Testing of the RFID Gripper Prototype for the Astorino Didactic Robot

The rapid development of robotics creates the need for systematic training and professional competence of workers, which caused many projects of teaching robots to be developed. Industrial robots are versatile manipulation machines, but they need appropriate tools and workstation equipment to perform their tasks. As part of the student PBL (Project Based Learning) project, a concept was developed and a prototype teaching workstation containing the Astorino educational robot with equipment was made. Elements of the workstation’s equipment enable the demonstration of selected capabilities of Industry 4.0, such as the Internet of Things and systems allowing RFID wireless identification of manipulated objects, among others. As part of the PBL project, gripper jaws integrated with an RFID sensor were developed, and identification range tests were conducted for different gripper configurations and manipulated objects with different types of RFID labels. The results show that the tested labels have a small read range of about 20-40 mm, which is related to the limitations of the 13.56 MHz HF RFID technology used, as well as the dimensions of the labels and the materials used. This parameter is of great importance in determining the applicability of RFID labels, so the results of the study will be used for further development work on RFID grippers.