Reducing Energy Consumption and Driving Torque in an Underactuated Robotic Arm Through Natural Motion

Responsible energy consumption is the SDG12 of the United Nation 2030 Development Agenda. Industry is one of the main energy consumers and unresponsible energetic usage affects both the environmental impact and the economic cost of the products. Innovating industry is a key factor to tackle these aspects as pursued through the SDG9. Robots are widely used in the mass-production industry to perform repetitive pick-and-place tasks. The high number of operations performed over the productive cycle by robots suggests that reducing the energetic consumption and the torque required is fundamental to save energy. In this light, this paper proposes a novel method to lower the energy consumption and the driving torque during the pick-and-place operations of a non-minimum phase underactuated flexible joints robotic arm, while ensuring good performances in terms of trajectory tracking. The method relies on the dynamic structural modification of the existing system to obtain a mechanical design that exploits the natural motion of the robotic arm.