Maximizing the Throwing Distance of Robotic Manipulators: An Optimization Approach

Manipulators are increasingly being called upon to perform a wide range of tasks. This paper explores the maximal distance throwing task for robotic manipulators and shows that this characteristic can be incorporated in the kinematic design process. Indeed, knowing the maximum distance that a manipulator can throw objects is useful in determining the viability of certain throwing tasks it might be called upon to execute. This paper studies three optimization problems: optimizing the release state to maximize the throwing distance, optimizing the kinematic trajectory subject to position, velocity, acceleration and jerk constraints, and finally optimizing the kinematic design of manipulators to maximize the workspace as well as the throwing distance. Three manipulator architectures are used as case studies for these optimizations: a planar RR, a spatial RRR and a wrist partitioned 6R manipulator. A video summarizing the key findings of this paper can be found at youtu.be/lTFYUXKP1jY.