Topology Optimization of High-Speed Flexible Robot Arms. (Dept. M.)

Abstract

There are growing demands in the robot industry for light structures in order to increase the speed of the robot motion and thus the productivity. Size and shape optimization are carried out previously to achieve minimum traveling time of the robot arm taking into consideration its flexibility. In this work, topology optimization is introduced for obtaining optimum robot arm to achieve minimum traveling time from both structure and control viewpoints. Method of Moving Asymptotes is used as optimization technique, because it can handle arbitrary number of constrains and considered to be a general and flexible optimization method. A comparison is accomplished between the optimal resulted design and its initial design for different dimensions of robot arm neglecting air damping. It is found that the reduction ratio of the travelling time reaches 62% and the reduction ratio of the weight reaches 70%. A comparison between this work using topology optimization of flexible robot arm outperforms the size and the shape optimization when considering the real condition that takes into account the air damping. The optimum topological design in this case gives reduction ratio of travelling time equals 44.8%, while previous work gives 23.5%.