Performance Analysis of Motion Control Algorithms of an Industrial Robot Arm Applied to 3D Concrete Printing Systems

Abstract

This paper shows the implementation and performance analysis of motion control algorithms for a 3D Concrete Printing system based on an industrial robotic arm. This work is part of the project of digital fabrication of low-cost housing. Regarding the technological architecture integrated in the present work, the hardware devices used are the EPSON C12 industrial robot arm and the RC700-A controller, and the software tools are Fusion 360 and RC+. To evaluate the point extraction and sequencing algorithms of a 3D structure and the motion control algorithms of the robot arm, three test wall models were designed: a semi-circle with horizontal undulations, a semi-circle with vertical undulations and an orthohedron without undulations. For the performance analysis, 140 trajectory times were extracted for each test model. The extracted values are the trajectory time intervals of the wall model envelope for each layer and of the internal trajectory of the wall model infill. Due to the increasing and decreasing trends of time for specific cases, it was concluded that in the working area of the robot arm, there are parts in which the robot is more efficient and therefore the joints offer less inertia for certain types of movements, for example straight or curved movements and short or long movements.

Keywords

• 3D concrete printing
• robotic arm
• motion control
• algorithms
• trajectory