One Problem, One Solution: Unifying Robot and Environment Design Optimization

TL;DR

This paper proposes a unified optimization framework for robot and environment design, demonstrating that simultaneous optimization yields superior results compared to separate approaches.

Contribution

It introduces a novel unified formulation for joint robot and environment optimization, improving solution quality over traditional separate methods.

Findings

Unified approach outperforms separate optimization methods

Simultaneous optimization yields significantly better solutions

Joint optimization enhances robotic system performance

Abstract

The task-specific optimization of robotic systems has long been divided into the optimization of the robot and the optimization of the environment. In this letter, we argue that these two problems are interdependent and should be treated as such. To this end, we present a unified problem formulation that enables for the simultaneous optimization of both the robot kinematics and the environment. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by jointly optimizing a robotic milling system. To compare our approach to the state of the art we also optimize the robot kinematics and environment separately. The results show that our approach outperforms the state of the art and that simultaneous optimization leads to a much better solution.