An Automated Tape Laying System Employing a Uniaxial Force Control Device

This paper deals with the design of a cost effective automated tape laying system (ATL system) with integrated uniaxial force control to ensure the necessary compaction forces as well as with an accurate temperature control to guarantee the used tape being melted appropriate. It is crucial to control the substrate and the oncoming tape onto a specific temperature level to ensure an optimal consolidation between the different layers of the product. Therefore, it takes several process steps from the spooled tape on the coil until it is finally tacked onto the desired mold. The different modules are divided into the tape storage spool, a tape-guiding roller, a tape processing unit, a heating zone and the consolidation unit. Moreover, a special robot control concept for testing the ATL system is presented. In contrast to many other systems, with this approach, the tape laying device is spatially fixed and the shape is moved accordingly by the robot, which allows for handling of rather compact and complex shapes. The functionality of the subsystems and the taping process itself was finally approved in experimental results using a carbon fiber reinforced HDPE tape.

Simultaneous Stiffness and Trajectory Optimization for Energy Minimization of Pick-and-Place Tasks of SEA-Actuated Parallel Kinematic Manipulators

A major field of industrial robot applications deals with repetitive tasks that alternate between operating points. For these so-called pick-and-place operations, parallel kinematic manipulators (PKM) are frequently employed. These tasks tend to automatically run for a long period of time and therefore minimizing energy consumption is always of interest. Recent research addresses this topic by the use of elastic elements and particularly series elastic actuators (SEA). This paper explores the possibilities of minimizing energy consumption of SEA actuated PKM performing pick-and-place tasks. The basic idea is to excite eigenmotions that result from the actuator springs and exploit their oscillating characteristics. To this end, a prescribed cyclic pick-and-place operation is analyzed and a dynamic model of SEA driven PKM is derived. Subsequently, an energy minimizing optimal control problem is formulated where operating trajectories as well as SEA stiffnesses are optimized simultaneously. Here, optimizing the actuator stiffness does not account for variable stiffness actuators. It serves as a tool for the design and dimensioning process. The hypothesis on energy reduction is tested on two (parallel) robot applications where redundant actuation is also addressed. The results confirm the validity of this approach.

A Parameter-Linear Formulation of the Optimal Path Following Problem for Robotic Manipulator

In this paper the computational challenges of time-optimal path following are addressed. The standard approach is to minimize the travel time, which inevitably leads to singularities at zero path speed, when reformulating the optimization problem in terms of a path parameter. Thus, smooth trajectory generation while maintaining a low computational effort is quite challenging, since the singularities have to be taken into account. To this end, a different approach is presented in this paper. This approach is based on maximizing the path speed along a prescribed path. Furthermore, the approach is capable of planning smooth trajectories numerically efficient. Moreover, the discrete reformulation of the underlying problem is linear in optimization variables.

Robot Path and Trajectory Planning Considering a Spatially Fixed TCP

This paper presents a method for planning a trajectory in workspace coordinates using a spatially fixed tool center point (TCP), while taking into account the processing path on a part. This approach is beneficial if it is easier to move the part rather than moving the tool. Whether a mathematical description that defines the shape to be processed or single points from a design program are used, the robot path is finally represented using B-splines. The use of splines enables the path to be continuous with a desired degree, which finally leads to a smooth robot trajectory. While calculating the robot trajectory through prescribed orientation, additionally a given velocity at the TCP has to be considered. The procedure was validated on a real system using an industrial robot moving an arbitrary defined part.