Analysis of Energy Consumption in a Two-arm Vertical Planar Robot by Varying a Dimensionless Design Construction Parameter

With the advent of 4.0 industry, robotic technologies are now considered part of the industrial complex. New areas are being researched, merging robotic manipulator's precise and accurate movement to automatise repetitive tasks. In the industry, hundreds of manipulators are being applied to execute tasks that were previously executed manually. This fact promoted not only the rising on the processes efficiency, but also reduced the human exposure to danger. The comprehension of those systems dynamic behaviour is essential to better design new manipulators for specific tasks. Despite this growth, just few other papers are regarding manipulator's energy and design. In this paper, a vertical planar robotic manipulator with two cylindrical arms and two degrees-of-freedom is modelled to analyse the influence of a dimensionless design parameter, i.e. a ratio between length and diameter, on the energy consumption and peak power required. In conjunction with preset properties, e.g. material density, weight and inertial momentum, three simulations are run covering two different move sets and two different manipulators sizes to calculate energy and power for a specific task. It is expected that the longest the manipulator's arm, the higher the energy consumption. However, this is not always observed, and the reasons why are discussed in this paper.