Energy saving manipulator by regenerating conservative energy

Describes the minimization of the dissipated energy in PTP motions of a vertically articulated manipulator. In order to save the dissipated energy, it is first necessary to regenerate the conservative energy, such as kinetic and potential energy, with high efficiency. An electrostatic condenser is used to store the conservative energy so that a rapid charge and discharge can be realized with high efficiency. The second problem for saving energy is to find an optimal path and an operating time which minimize the dissipated energy in PTP motions of a vertically articulated manipulator. A globally optimal path is roughly estimated so that the heavier link is accelerated toward gravitational direction and decelerated toward anti-gravitation. This proposed path is used as a starting function of the iteration method solving a non-linear two-point boundary-value problem. The simulation results show that a proposed optimal path can reduce the dissipated energy to 1/14/spl sim/1/30 compared with conventional path when the operating time is selected so as to be optimal.