Life cycle management of industrial robots based on deterioration evaluation - facility layout and motion planning taking account of joint gear wear

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for optimizing the operating conditions of industrial robots in order to improve their reliability, as a part of facility life-cycle management based on life-cycle simulation of the robot. In the life-cycle simulation, operational and environmental stresses acting on components during operations are evaluated and their deterioration and resultant functional degradation are simulated based on task descriptions, robotic models and deterioration models. By means of a hybrid genetic algorithm, the layout of the robot and velocity patterns are optimized so as to minimize deterioration of the joint gear while maintaining a constant total execution time for the operation. An application of the method to the robots in an automatic assembly line is presented as an illustrative example.