Ongoing Research Projects

Automatic generation of optimized robotic structures for a desired task

Team:  M. Sc. Daniel Andrés Ramirez
Year:  2013
Funding:  Administrative Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation of Colombia ("Colciencias")
Is Finished:  yes

Industry shows each day a continual increment in its automation degree. A lot of tasks, which were made in the past by the human beings, are now carried out automatically by robots. This tendency is especially visible, for example, in the automobile industry, where important manufacturers use thousands of robots for production tasks in their factories.

In order to propel the middle and small industries forward, a new method for robots development from a specific task is expected. The goal of the project is the automatic and global synthesis of the robot structure from the design requirements. Hence it is necessary to combine the geometrical and structural synthesis in one common step for serial chain manipulators. The first step to reach the objective is the automatic modeling of the kinematics and dynamics of the robot structure according to useful optimization parameters. Then it is possible to calculate kinematical and dynamical performance indices as well as cost functions for the optimization process. As result of the optimization, a mechanism, as well as the equations of its respective model suitable to apply in the current control architectures is obtained. Wide knowledges in multibody systems are not needed.

The successfull implementation of the methods for serial chain robots promises an extension in the field of parallel kinematic machines, which is subject of a successive project.

Past Research Projects

Automatic generation of optimized robotic structures for a desired task

Team:  M. Sc. Daniel Andrés Ramirez
Year:  2013
Funding:  Administrative Department of Science, Technology, and Innovation of Colombia ("Colciencias")
Is Finished:  yes

Industry shows each day a continual increment in its automation degree. A lot of tasks, which were made in the past by the human beings, are now carried out automatically by robots. This tendency is especially visible, for example, in the automobile industry, where important manufacturers use thousands of robots for production tasks in their factories.

In order to propel the middle and small industries forward, a new method for robots development from a specific task is expected. The goal of the project is the automatic and global synthesis of the robot structure from the design requirements. Hence it is necessary to combine the geometrical and structural synthesis in one common step for serial chain manipulators. The first step to reach the objective is the automatic modeling of the kinematics and dynamics of the robot structure according to useful optimization parameters. Then it is possible to calculate kinematical and dynamical performance indices as well as cost functions for the optimization process. As result of the optimization, a mechanism, as well as the equations of its respective model suitable to apply in the current control architectures is obtained. Wide knowledges in multibody systems are not needed.

The successfull implementation of the methods for serial chain robots promises an extension in the field of parallel kinematic machines, which is subject of a successive project.