Path Optimization in Robotic Welding of Plate Heat Exchangers: An Improved Ant Colony Approach

Abstract

In industrial robot welding heat exchanger plate route planning, there are drawbacks to using the traditional ant colony algorithm (ACA), including poor search efficiency and a propensity to trend toward the local optimum. To address the above issues, first of all, the article introduces the improved pheromone volatilization factor, which is adjustable based on iteration times in the ACA. Secondly, it combines the new perturbation strategy and the cross-mutation operation, proposes an improved genetic algorithm, and fuses it into the ACA, which increases the diversity of the ACA’s path searching and improves the ability of the local and global search. Finally, the improved ACA mechanism is verified by experiments and compared with six existing path planning algorithms (including three ACA variant algorithms and three mainstream algorithms). The experimental results show that the IACAG algorithm has excellent performance in welding heat exchanger path planning and can achieve lower calculation time and iteration times under the conditions of optimal solution and zero deviation, showing comprehensive advantages in solution quality, stability, and efficiency.