Application Area 7: Minimize Energy Consumption

Often, machines are required to perform repetitive tasks. An example is a robot in a manufacturing line. It is required to pick up a component at one location and deposit it at another location. The delta robot shown below is one such robot.

Delta robots are parallel robots that allow motion of an end-effector platform parallel to a base. They are extensively used for pick-and-place applications in packaging industry, high precision assembly operations in electronics and in 3D printers as they are capable of high speed operations. The model shown below has 3 degrees of freedom – three translations of the end-effector.



Figure 1.
Objective
Synthesize a robot configuration that consumes the least energy while the end effector traverses a given path
Design Variables
This delta robot has five design variables. These are shown in the image below.


Figure 2.
  • DV1: Length of the top leg
  • Dv2: Angle of top leg with horizontal
  • Length of bottom triangle
  • Width of parallelogram
  • Length of top triangle
Results
The total energy consumed by the three motors was reduced by 30%; the peak torque for one of the motor also reduced by more than 57% in the optimal design configuration.


Figure 3.