One Problem, One Solution: Unifying Robot Design and Cell Layout Optimization

The task-specific optimization of robotic systems has since the inception of the field been divided into the optimization of the robot and the optimization of the layout of its workstations. 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 workstation layout. 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 optimize the robot’s kinematics and layout separately. The results show that our approach outperforms the state of the art and that simultaneous optimization leads to up to eight times better solutions.