Reachability analysis for cooperative processing with industrial robots

Abstract

The cooperation of several industrial robots can improve processes or even makes new processes possible. In the scope of this work, the effect of the cooperation on the reachable workspace is investigated. Thus, the approach of reachability maps is extended to cooperative processing by simultaneously moving the tool and the workpiece. This allows a general statement about the improvement of the workpiece related reachability due to the simultaneous movement of tool and workpiece. A dual arm robot setup is used for implementation and the cooperative movement is compared to single arm movement by generating reachability maps for each case. In doing so, it is also presented how the integration of a collision detection improves the representativeness of the reachability maps.