Nissan’s Door-Durability Robot Slams 14,000 Doors Per Day

One of the biggest benefits of automating with industrial robots is the ability to reallocate mindless, repetitive tasks, freeing up human labor for jobs that are more demanding and, hopefully, more rewarding.

You’d be hard pressed to find a better example of repetition than opening and closing car doors 14,000 times a day, which is why it’s heartening to learn that Nissan has delegated that particular task to a robot. Meet Rosie, the 1.5-ton door-durability robot in residence at the Nissan Technical Center North America.

A custom end-effector enables Rosie to perform her duties without scratching or otherwise damaging the test vehicle. As part of Nissan’s quality control process, Rosie opens and closes a car door every six seconds, which means that over the course of three days, she opens and closes a door as often as a typical customer would in ten years: approximately 45,000 times.

Automation is an undeniably important component of quality assurance and control in Industry 4.0, enabling manufacturers to inspect parts as fast as they produce them . Soon, quality professionals will be inspecting production aircraft using drones and scanning parts at high speed with industrial robots.

(Image courtesy of Nissan.)

Nevertheless, Rosie demonstrates that even the simplest inspection applications can benefit from automation, especially when that application needs to be repeated 14,000 times a day.

For more examples of quality testing from another major brand, check out these Ford Videos of Interior Quality Control Tests.