Energy and Peak Power Optimization of Time-Bounded Robot Trajectories

Abstract

This paper, as an outcome of the EU project AREUS, heralds an optimization procedure that reduces up to 30% of energy consumption and up to 60% in peak power for the trajectories that have been tested on real industrial robots. We have evaluated a number of cost functions and tested our algorithm for a variety of scenarios such as varying cycle times, payloads, and single/multirobot cases in both ac- and dc-operated robot cells. The significance of our work is not only in the impressive savings, simplicity of implementation, and preserving path and cycle time, but also in the variety of test scenarios that include different kinds of KUKA robots. We have carried out the optimization and experiments in as realistic conditions as possible.