Increasing the Energy Efficiency of Multi-robot Production Lines in the Automotive Industry

This paper quantitatively reports bout potential energy savings on robotic assembly lines for the automotive industry. The key aspect of the proposed approach is that both cell production rate and robot hardware limitations are consideredasstrictconstraints,sothatnoplantrevisionis needed. The methodology relies on: a)calculationofenergy- optimal trajectories, by means of time scaling, concerning the robots’ motion from the last process point to the home positions; b)reduction o f the energy consumption vi aearlier release of the actuator brake whentherobotsarekeptstationary. Simulation results arepresented,whicharebasedontheproductiontiming characteristicsmeasuredonarealplant.