AR Training App for Energy Optimal Programming of Cobots

TL;DR

This paper investigates energy consumption in collaborative robots, assesses factors influencing it, proposes four optimization strategies, and introduces an AR game to promote energy-efficient programming practices.

Contribution

It presents novel strategies for reducing cobot energy use and develops an AR training app to facilitate sustainable programming techniques.

Findings

Energy savings of up to 37% with optimization strategies

Identified key parameters affecting robot energy consumption

Developed an AR game for user training in energy-efficient programming

Abstract

Worldwide most factories aim for low-cost and fast production ignoring resources and energy consumption. But, high revenues have been accompanied by environmental degradation. The United Nations reacted to the ecological problem and proposed the Sustainable Development Goals, and one of them is Sustainable Production (Goal 12). In addition, the participation of lightweight robots, such as collaborative robots, in modern industrial production is increasing. The energy consumption of a single collaborative robot is not significant, however, the consumption of more and more cobots worldwide is representative. Consequently, our research focuses on strategies to reduce the energy consumption of lightweight robots aiming for sustainable production. Firstly, the energy consumption of the lightweight robot UR10e is assessed by a set of experiments. We analyzed the results of the experiments to describe the relationship between the energy consumption and the evaluation parameters, thus paving the way to optimization strategies. Next, we propose four strategies to reduce energy consumption: 1) optimal standby position, 2) optimal robot instruction, 3) optimal motion time, and 4) reduction of dissipative energy. The results show that cobots potentially reduce from 3\% up to 37\% of their energy consumption, depending on the optimization technique. To disseminate the results of our research, we developed an AR game in which the users learn how to energy-efficiently program cobots.