Energy Consumption in Robotics: A Simplified Modeling Approach

The energy consumption of a robot depends, among other factors, on its trajectory. Current methods for trajectory optimization with fixed start and end points can reduce the used energy by up to 30%. However, their use in trajectory planning for industrial robots is still restricted due to model complexity and lack of integration with planning tools that address other concerns (e.g. collision avoidance). We propose an approach to estimate the energy consumption for given trajectories. It includes differentiable inertial and kinematic models from standard open-source tools, integrating standard ROS planning methods. An inverse dynamics-based energy model is optionally extended with a single-parameter electrical model. By comparing the inertial and electrical models of a collaborative robot, we show that simplified models provide competitive accuracy while being easy to deploy in practice.