Towards accurate robot modelling of flexible robotic manipulators
Zoi Arkouli, P. Aivaliotis, Sotiris Makris
Abstract
As industry heads to an era of high productivity and energy efficiency, the manufacturing of robotic manipulators moves far from the traditionally heavy and stiff structures. Therefore, rigid body dynamic models become obsolete and the need for new dynamic models accounting for the flexibility of industrial manipulators emerges. To this end, a physics-based approach considering the flexibility of robots’ links and gearboxes is presented. In particular, this paper intends to provide a framework for modelling flexible robotic structures’ towards increasing their accuracy. The robot components’ elasticity is introduced in a lumped parameters model by pairs of springs and dampers, the number of which is affected by the target of keeping the computational effort and run time of the simulation at levels allowing for the integration of the model in industrial environments. Finally, the proposed model considers the activation of the robots’ Digital Twins aiming to enable the use of the model in a series of applications e.g. predictive maintenance, energy efficiency optimization etc.