Abstract
Vacuum-based handling, used in many applications and industries, offers great flexibility and fast handling processes. However, due to significant energy conversion losses from electrical energy to the useable suction flow, vacuum-based handling is highly energy-inefficient. In preliminary work, we showed that our grasp optimization method offers the potential to save at least 50% of energy by a targeted placement of individual suction cups on the part to be handled. By considering the leakage between gripper and object, this paper aims to extend the grasp optimization method by predicting the effective compressed air consumption depending on object surface roughness, gripper diameter and gripper count. Through balancing of the target pressure difference and the leakage tolerance in combination with the gripper count and gripper diameter, significant reductions of the compressed air, use and therefore the overall energy consumption, can be achieved. With knowledge about the gripper-specific leakage behavior, in the future it will be straightforward for system integrators to minimize the need for oversizing due to process-related uncertainties and therefore to provide application-specific and energy-optimized handling solutions to their customers.
Highlights
Vacuum-based handling systems are widely used in warehouse automation and industrial production environments, e.g., in automotive production [1]
In the particular case of vacuum-based handling, where the vacuum is usually generated by compressed air-supplied vacuum ejectors, significant energy losses occur along the energy conversion chain (Figure 1)
Besides the development of isolated components [4] and the application-specific process planning and system configuration [5], one major field of activity aiming at increasing the energy-efficiency of vacuum-based handling processes is the targeted design of the gripping system
Summary
Vacuum-based handling systems are widely used in warehouse automation and industrial production environments, e.g., in automotive production [1]. Present approaches for grasp planning in vacuum-based handling focus on a single vacuum cup [7,8] or on systems with two to four adjustable cups [9,10,11,12]. These approaches are rather specific with regard to their applicability which is disadvantageous for a both automated and transparent design process [13] (more detailed information on present research on grasp planning for vacuum-based handling is given in [6]). The model-based grasp optimization method proposed in [6] is potentially applicable to arbitrary shell-like parts and offers great potential of energy savings
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