Part-Orienting Devices

A POD, Part Orienting Device, is a low degree-of-freedom machine capable of producing spatial trajectories and rotations. A single “part orienting device”, or POD, can be used in a task that might otherwise require a robot or multiple single degree-of-freedom mechanisms. A simple example of a POD might be a robot wrist customed design to for a single operation that needs to be performed thousands or millions of times. Such a wrist could be faster, more accurate, and operare with significantly lower energy requirements than a traditional robot wrist. This project was funded by the National Science Foundation and developed in conjunction with Dr. Pierre Larochelle of the Florida Institute of Technology.