Resourceful operation and design of robots is key for sustainable industrial automation. This will be enabled by lightweight design along with time and energy optimal control of robotic manipulators. Design and control of such systems is intertwined as the control must take into account inherent mechanical compliance while the design must accommodate the dynamic requirements demanded by the control. As basis for such design optimization, a method for estimating the lifetime of elastic link robotic manipulators is presented. This is applied to the geometry optimization of flexible serial manipulators performing pick-and-place operations, where the optimization objective is a combination of overall weight and vibration amplitudes. The lifetime estimation draws from a fatigue analysis combining the rainflow counting algorithm and the method of critical cutting plane. Tresca hypothesis is used to formulate an equivalent stress, and linear damage accumulation is assumed. The final robot geometry is selected from a Pareto front as a tradeoff of lifetime and vibration characteristic. The method is illustrated for a three degrees of freedom articulated robotic manipulator.

翻译：机器人的高效运行与设计是实现可持续工业自动化的关键。这需要通过轻量化设计以及机械臂的时间与能量最优控制来实现。此类系统的设计与控制相互关联，因为控制必须考虑固有的机械柔性，而设计则需满足控制所要求的动态性能。作为此类设计优化的基础，本文提出了一种用于估计弹性连杆机器人机械臂寿命的方法。该方法应用于执行拾取-放置操作的柔性串联机械臂的几何优化，其优化目标是整体重量与振动幅值的综合考量。寿命估计基于疲劳分析，结合了雨流计数算法与临界切割平面法。采用Tresca假说构建等效应力，并假设线性损伤累积。最终机器人几何结构通过帕累托前沿进行选择，以权衡寿命与振动特性。该方法以一台三自由度关节型机器人机械臂为例进行了说明。