Hybrid design for multiple-goal task realization of robot arm with rotating table

Abstract

The minimization of task completion time of robot arms has been an extensively studied area in robotics. Previous researches mostly focused on optimization methods for the motion planning and collision avoidance, which did not involve any modifications in the hardware design of a robot arm. Some researches, on the other hand, fully design a specialized robot arm for a given task. In this study, we propose a hybrid design composed of a hardware design and an optimization method. The hardware design is a tool attachment, which is a fixed linkage attached between the end-effector of a robot arm and a tool. In the optimization method, we incorporate base placement design, goal rearrangement and collision avoidance through motion coordination in order to minimize the task completion time of a robot arm. Our proposed design is tested using a 6-DOF robot arm and a 1-DOF rotating table. The method is evaluated over a single task and a set of tasks showing its effectiveness and applicability for practical applications.