Performance analysis and optimization of serial robots

Performance analysis and optimization design based on performance criteria have been being an important issue in robotics, and a variety of performance criteria have been proposed. In this paper, we analyze robotic performance in terms of different criteria including workspace, global velocity performance and global acceleration performance, present a comprehensive performance criterion by normalizing and integrating the above single criteria, and then propose a multiple objective optimization method to determine the dimensions of the links for design of the serial robots based on the comprehensive performance criterion. The methods of performance analysis and dimension optimization are illustrated and applied to two types of robots, including a biped modular climbing robot and a conventional 6-DoF industrial robot.