In today’s rapidly evolving technological age, robots have permeated every aspect of our lives. As their applications continue to expand, the challenges they face are becoming increasingly severe. How can we ensure that these high-tech devices maintain their superior performance in diverse and complex environments? The answer lies in climatic testing. As a core tool in this testing process, environmental reliability test chambers play an indispensable role. Whether you’re a robotics practitioner or simply a reader curious about this field, this article is sure to provide you with inspiration and insights.
Robot Applications
With the rapid advancement of robotics technology, robots have evolved from simple mechanical operations to multifaceted collaborators, from execution tools to intelligent partners, and from traditional robots to smart robots. Their areas of application are also constantly expanding. Depending on these areas, robots can be broadly categorized into the following groups:
Industrial Robots
These are primarily used in the manufacturing sector, performing repetitive or labor-intensive tasks such as welding, assembly, painting, handling, cutting, packaging, sorting, and testing. Industrial robots have significantly improved production efficiency and automation.
Service Robots
These are primarily used in non-industrial sectors and encompass a variety of uses, including home, commercial, and medical applications. Examples include smart home cleaning robots, companion robots, food delivery robots, medical care robots, and educational robots. Service robots improve people’s lives and enhance service quality.
Agricultural Robots
These are primarily used in agricultural production, assisting farmers with tasks such as sowing, tilling, spraying pesticides, and harvesting fruit. They help improve the automation and efficiency of agricultural production while reducing manual labor.
Specialty Robots
These are primarily used in harsh or difficult-to-access environments to perform specific tasks. Examples include bomb disposal robots, rescue robots, deep-sea exploration robots, satellite exploration robots, and nuclear industry operation robots. These robots are typically highly adaptable and reliable.
Military Robots
Mainly used in the military, these robots assist in reconnaissance, mine clearance, patrol, and combat missions. Examples include reconnaissance drones and mine clearance robots. Military robots can effectively improve combat efficiency while reducing the risk of casualties.
Environmental Challenges Faced by Robots
Both traditional industrial robots and the rapidly developing humanoid robots of recent years inevitably need to operate in a variety of harsh environmental conditions, such as low and high temperatures, high humidity, and high salinity, to cope with a wide range of application scenarios. So, how do these environmental factors affect robot performance?
High-Pressure Environments
In high-pressure environments like the deep sea, robots must possess extremely high structural strength. If they cannot withstand the high pressure, the robot’s exterior and internal components may deform or even be damaged, affecting their normal operation.
High-Temperature Environments
Under high-temperature conditions, electronic components are prone to overheating and malfunction. Battery performance will significantly degrade, and the robot’s exterior material may soften or deform, affecting overall structural stability.
Low-Temperature Environments
Low temperatures can cause degradation in electronic and battery performance, reduce the flexibility of mechanical components, and some materials may become brittle at extremely low temperatures, increasing the risk of damage.
High-Salinity Environments
High salinity, such as in the ocean or coastal areas, is highly corrosive to robot materials, causing metal components to rust and electronic circuits to short-circuit due to corrosion, impacting the lifespan and safety of the device.
Heavy Rain/Humid Environments
In rainy or humid environments, electronic devices may short-circuit due to moisture. Furthermore, the resistance of rainwater increases the robot’s energy consumption, affecting its efficiency and endurance.
Application of Climatic Chambers in Robot Testing
Robots are able to perform a variety of complex tasks, relying primarily on three core capabilities: perception, decision-making, and execution. However, the realization of these capabilities requires a crucial step: environmental reliability testing.
How Do Robots Adapt to Complex Environments?
Perception
Robots use a variety of sensors (such as light sensors, sound sensors, tactile sensors, and gas sensors) to perceive their surroundings, acquiring key information about the environment, including light intensity, sound, temperature, and gas composition. This information provides the robot with a comprehensive understanding of its surroundings.
Decision-Making
After acquiring environmental information, robots use artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced algorithms to analyze and process this data, enabling them to make accurate judgments and decisions in complex and changing environments. This capability allows robots to cope with unknown or dynamically changing scenarios.
Execution
Based on the resulting decisions, robots can execute corresponding actions, such as moving, grasping objects, and interacting with the environment, to efficiently complete assigned tasks.
What Are the Robot Climatic Testing Items?
To ensure the stability of core robot capabilities such as perception, decision-making, and execution, rigorous environmental reliability testing in various complex environments is essential. Only then can robots truly adapt to the changing conditions of real-world work, meet diverse application requirements, and reliably transition from laboratory research and development to real-world deployment. The following are some common robot climatic testing items:
Low-Temperature Environment Test
The robot is tested for 24 hours of continuous operation at -40°C with a relative humidity of no more than 50%. This test evaluates the robot’s performance in extreme low-temperature conditions. It requires that the robot exhibit no material embrittlement, component cracking, or electronic component failure in low-temperature environments, ensuring functional stability and normal operation. This test requires a high and low temperature humidity test chamber.
High-Temperature Environment Test
The robot is tested for 24 hours of continuous operation at 55°C with a relative humidity of no more than 50%. This test verifies the robot’s adaptability to sustained high-temperature environments. It requires that the robot exhibit no material aging, deformation, or degradation of electronic component performance in high-temperature environments, ensuring long-term operational reliability. This test requires a high and low temperature humidity test chamber.
Damp-Heat Environment Test
The robot is tested for 48 hours of continuous operation at 30°C with a relative humidity of 95%. This test focuses on verifying the robot’s moisture resistance and ensuring that it does not suffer from electrochemical corrosion, electrical shorts, or insulation degradation in damp-heat environments. This test requires a constant temperature humidity test chamber.
Salt Spray Test
The robot is tested continuously for 48 hours in a 5% salt spray solution at 35°C to assess its ability to withstand high salt spray corrosion. The test requires that the robot’s housing and metal components show no obvious signs of corrosion, oxidation, or malfunction after testing. This robot is suitable for specialized industrial environments such as coastal areas, shipbuilding, and chemical industries. The test is conducted using a salt spray tester.
Future Trends in Robot Climatic Testing
Environmental reliability testing is not only a comprehensive examination of robot hardware and software but also a critical step in ensuring reliability and safety. In the future, as robots become increasingly intelligent and their application scenarios expand—from industrial production lines to polar expeditions, from deep-sea operations to space exploration—testing requirements will continue to rise, driving technological advancement across the entire robotics manufacturing industry chain.
Both complete machine manufacturers and suppliers of core components such as sensors, batteries, and motors face the challenge of meeting higher standards for environmental tolerance. This involves not only optimizing hardware aspects such as material selection, structural sealing, and thermal management design but also ensuring the stability of perception systems under extreme environmental conditions and the adaptability of algorithms in dynamic environments.
Climatic testing is gradually shifting from “passive verification” to “active guidance,” becoming a core driver of product iteration and technological innovation in robotics. By simulating various extreme environmental conditions found in the real world, robot environmental test chambers provide engineers with a highly controlled testing method, enabling them to identify and resolve potential issues before robots are deployed in production. This forward-looking testing method not only effectively exposes design flaws and improves system reliability but also significantly accelerates the process of technological maturity, helping robot manufacturers achieve breakthroughs in the global high-end market and ensuring that their products have excellent stability and safety in complex and changing operating environments.