Path planning of cooperating industrial robots using evolutionary algorithms

Abstract

In recent years carbon fibre reinforced plastics (CFRP) have gained enormous popularity in aircraft applications. Since the material is very expensive, costs have to be saved through an automated production. For the manufacturing of large structures it is often advisable to use cooperating robots. However, a major problem for the economic use of complex components is the programming of the robot paths. Manual teach-in is no feasible solution and therefore often decides if automated production is profitable. In this work, a system is presented which automatically calculates robot paths using evolutionary algorithms. The use of the proposed system allows, to reduce the commissioning time drastically and changes to the process can be made without great effort by changing the component data.