Energy Efficient Motion Planning of Dual-Armed Robots with Pickup Point Determination for Transportation Tasks

In this paper, we propose energy efficient, conflict-free motion planning of a dual-armed robot arm for transportation works. The determination of picking points and conflict-free motion planning are simultaneously optimized. We formulate a nonlinear optimization problem which aims to minimize the weighted sum of the energy consumption and the total completion time when the dynamics of the robot arms are given. The proposed method is implemented in an experimental system. The computational results show that the proposed method can save energy consumption and optimize the points for picking up workpieces while minimizing the total completion time. The performance of the dual-armed robot is shown to be more effective than that of a single-armed robot under various situations.