Evaluation and Optimization of Industrial Robot Families Using Different Kinematic Measures

Abstract

In this paper, overall manipulability measure and stroke of workspace are proposed and evaluated as design criteria for optimal kinematics design of a family of industrial robots. The object of study is a 6 degree of freedom serial robot manipulator where individual family members (robots) share arms from a common platform. The paper presents a formal mathematical framework where the product family design problem is stated as an optimization problem and where optimization is used to find an optimal product family. The paper illustrates how the proposed kinematic design criteria may be used to support the optimal kinematics design of a family of industrial robots, and it also visualizes the tradeoff between the size of the common platform and the kinematics performance of individual robots.