Patents by Inventor Jiafan Zhang

Jiafan Zhang has filed for patents to protect the following inventions. This listing includes patent applications that are pending as well as patents that have already been granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

  • Publication number: 20220324071
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure provide an apparatus and method for mounting an O-ring to a work piece. The apparatus comprises a guiding component comprising a frustum portion arranged coaxially with a groove formed on an end surface of the work piece for receiving the O-ring, a large end face of the frustum portion arranged adjacent to the end surface; and an operation component adapted to drive the guiding component to rotate back and forth about a central axis of the guiding component, wherein a diameter of the large end face is substantially same as an inner diameter of the O-ring to allow the O-ring surrounding and eccentric to the frustum portion to slide into the groove with a rotation of the guiding component.
    Type: Application
    Filed: September 25, 2019
    Publication date: October 13, 2022
    Inventors: Qi Lu, Jiafan Zhang, Hang Zhou
  • Publication number: 20220297319
    Abstract: Robot arm link (100) comprises a body made of non-metallic material, a transmission cable (102) made of conducive material and embedded within the body (101), and at least one connector (103) arranged on the body (101) and coupled to the transmission cable (102), each connector (103) adapted to be electrically connected to a connector (1031) of a further robot arm link (1001) of a same specification, a sensor (301), or a power source (302) of the robot (200). By embedding the transmission cable (102) within the non-metallic material to form the robot arm link (100), there is no need to consider how to route the cable (102) and thus the difficulty of cable routing design can be significantly reduced. Furthermore, the efficiency of robot assembly and maintenance can be increased accordingly. In addition, the cables (102) arranged in the robot arm links (101) are not easily damaged, thereby increasing the service life of the robot.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 17, 2019
    Publication date: September 22, 2022
    Inventors: Jiafan Zhang, Hao Gu
  • Publication number: 20220277603
    Abstract: Method for determining a lock type of a lock device. In the method, a group of raw data of a group of lock devices is collected from a group of sensors respectively. Here the group of lock devices are respectively mounted to an object at a group of positions, and the group of lock devices belong to at least one lock type of a plurality of lock types. A group of probability distributions are obtained based on the group of raw data. Here a probability distribution in the group of probability distributions is associated with a lock device in the group of lock devices and probabilities of lock types to which the lock device belongs. A lock type of the lock device is determined based on the group of probability distributions.
    Type: Application
    Filed: August 14, 2019
    Publication date: September 1, 2022
    Inventors: Ye Tian, Yichao Mao, Jiafan Zhang
  • Publication number: 20220241990
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure provide a robot. The robot comprises a joint housing and an internal engaging member arranged on an inner surface of the joint housing; a second arm link comprising a flange; and a moving assembly at least partially arranged in the joint housing and comprising an input shaft adapted to rotate about an axis of the input shaft; and at least one intermediate member coupled to the output flange and adapted to be driven by the input shaft to rotate while engaging with the internal engaging member, to cause a relative movement between the first and second arm links. By integrating the relative static parts of the gearbox, such as the joint housing and the output flange to the robot arm links, high connection strength of connections between robot arm links can be achieved in a more cost-efficient and space-saving manner.
    Type: Application
    Filed: July 24, 2019
    Publication date: August 4, 2022
    Inventors: Hao Gu, Jiafan Zhang, Jibo Yang, Kangjian Wang
  • Publication number: 20220050016
    Abstract: Methods and devices for diagnosing a robot. A method includes obtaining a spectrum of a motion signal generated by a rotating component of the robot during operation of the robot. A frequency amplitude of a sub-component of the rotating component is determined from the spectrum, based on a physical characteristic and a speed of the sub-component. A failure of the sub-component is detected by comparing the frequency amplitude with a threshold amplitude.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 24, 2018
    Publication date: February 17, 2022
    Applicant: ABB Schweiz AG
    Inventors: Heqing Sun, Jiafan Zhang
  • Publication number: 20220024038
    Abstract: Methods and devices for diagnosing a robot. The method includes obtaining a first signal generated by a rotating component of the robot during operation of the robot. The first signal includes motion information of the rotating component. The first signal is preprocessed to filter out a part of the motion information in the first signal. The preprocessed first signal or spectrum information about the preprocessed first signal is sent to a server for diagnosing the robotU. A second signal is received from the server, wherein the second signal includes diagnostic information indicating whether a sub-component of the rotating component has a failure.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 24, 2018
    Publication date: January 27, 2022
    Applicant: ABB Schweiz AG
    Inventors: Heqing Sun, Jiafan Zhang
  • Publication number: 20210396307
    Abstract: A housing for a plastic gearbox and associated plastic gearbox and a robot. The housing includes a body including an inner engaging portion circumferentially arranged on an inner surface of the body, the inner engaging portion adapted to be engaged with a transmission assembly of the plastic gearbox; and an adjusting mechanism arranged around the body and operable to squeeze the body inwardly to reduce an inner diameter of the body. By using the adjusting mechanism to squeeze the body of the housing inwardly, the fit error between the inner engaging portion and the transmission assembly can be compensated in an efficient way. Furthermore, the adjusting mechanism is a part of the housing and thus the body of the housing which is made of plastic does not need to be too thick, which makes injection molding easier and manufacturing precision improved.
    Type: Application
    Filed: December 10, 2018
    Publication date: December 23, 2021
    Applicant: ABB Schweiz AG
    Inventors: Hao Gu, Jibo Yang, Han Chen, Wei Song, Jiafan Zhang
  • Patent number: 10788429
    Abstract: It is therefore an objective to provide an object multi-perspective inspection apparatus and a method therefor. The apparatus includes an image capture device; an inspection site and at least two reflection devices, being arranged for reflecting simultaneously to the image capture device at least two different side views of the object located in the inspection site; wherein: the image capture device has a field of view including the at least two different side views of the reflection. By introducing reflection devices into the inspection apparatus to enable the image capture device to “see” the part from multiple views at once, multiple surfaces can be inspected at once, in one image frame, without having the need to reposition the reflection device, the camera and/or the object for every single surface. There are more than one reflection devices placed in the camera's field of view to assist the inspection process by exploiting otherwise hidden surfaces of any given solid object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 5, 2019
    Date of Patent: September 29, 2020
    Assignee: ABB Schweiz AG
    Inventors: Martin Kefer, Jiafan Zhang
  • Publication number: 20200132609
    Abstract: It is therefore an objective to provide an object multi-perspective inspection apparatus and a method therefor. The apparatus includes an image capture device; an inspection site and at least two reflection devices, being arranged for reflecting simultaneously to the image capture device at least two different side views of the object located in the inspection site; wherein: the image capture device has a field of view including the at least two different side views of the reflection. By introducing reflection devices into the inspection apparatus to enable the image capture device to “see” the part from multiple views at once, multiple surfaces can be inspected at once, in one image frame, without having the need to reposition the reflection device, the camera and/or the object for every single surface. There are more than one reflection devices placed in the camera's field of view to assist the inspection process by exploiting otherwise hidden surfaces of any given solid object.
    Type: Application
    Filed: November 5, 2019
    Publication date: April 30, 2020
    Inventors: Martin Kefer, Jiafan Zhang
  • Patent number: 10488346
    Abstract: It is therefore an objective to provide an object multi-perspective inspection apparatus and a method therefor. The apparatus includes an image capture device; an inspection site and at least two reflection devices, being arranged for reflecting simultaneously to the image capture device at least two different side views of the object located in the inspection site; wherein: the image capture device has a field of view including the at least two different side views of the reflection. By introducing reflection devices into the inspection apparatus to enable the image capture device to “see” the part from multiple views at once, multiple surfaces can be inspected at once, in one image frame, without having the need to reposition the reflection device, the camera and/or the object for every single surface. There are more than one reflection devices placed in the camera's field of view to assist the inspection process by exploiting otherwise hidden surfaces of any given solid object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 26, 2018
    Date of Patent: November 26, 2019
    Assignee: ABB Schweiz AG
    Inventors: Martin Kefer, Jiafan Zhang
  • Patent number: 10018995
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a method and apparatus for optimizing performance of a robotic cell. The robotic cell comprises at least one workstation and at least one robot. The method may comprise determining a factor and a corresponding workstation sensitive to the performance of the robotic cell by performing a sensitivity analysis on an initial cell layout for the robotic cell; and performing a performance optimization process on the corresponding workstation based on the determined factor to obtain an improved cell layout for the robotic cell. With embodiments of the present disclosure, it is possible to perform performance optimization of the robotic cell on the sensitive workstation regarding to the sensitive factor, and thus it may efficiently determine an improved cell layout which may achieve performance improvement.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 3, 2016
    Date of Patent: July 10, 2018
    Assignee: ABB Schweiz AG
    Inventor: Jiafan Zhang
  • Publication number: 20180188184
    Abstract: It is therefore an objective to provide an object multi-perspective inspection apparatus and a method therefor. The apparatus includes an image capture device; an inspection site and at least two reflection devices, being arranged for reflecting simultaneously to the image capture device at least two different side views of the object located in the inspection site; wherein: the image capture device has a field of view including the at least two different side views of the reflection. By introducing reflection devices into the inspection apparatus to enable the image capture device to “see” the part from multiple views at once, multiple surfaces can be inspected at once, in one image frame, without having the need to reposition the reflection device, the camera and/or the object for every single surface. There are more than one reflection devices placed in the camera's field of view to assist the inspection process by exploiting otherwise hidden surfaces of any given solid object.
    Type: Application
    Filed: February 26, 2018
    Publication date: July 5, 2018
    Inventors: Martin Kefer, Jiafan Zhang
  • Publication number: 20160282855
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present disclosure relate to a method and apparatus for optimizing performance of a robotic cell. The robotic cell comprises at least one workstation and at least one robot. The method may comprise determining a factor and a corresponding workstation sensitive to the performance of the robotic cell by performing a sensitivity analysis on an initial cell layout for the robotic cell; and performing a performance optimization process on the corresponding workstation based on the determined factor to obtain an improved cell layout for the robotic cell. With embodiments of the present disclosure, it is possible to perform performance optimization of the robotic cell on the sensitive workstation regarding to the sensitive factor, and thus it may efficiently determine an improved cell layout which may achieve performance improvement.
    Type: Application
    Filed: June 3, 2016
    Publication date: September 29, 2016
    Inventor: Jiafan Zhang