DTW: a design method for designing robot end-effectors

This paper proposes a method to design multifunctional robot end-effectors that consider the weight as one of the main design constraint. The motivation for this work comes from aircraft industry. This sector, traditionally characterized by manual processes, has an increasing interest in the use of commercial off-the-shelf robots for the automation of their manufacturing processes. The design method proposed in this paper, named design to weight ( DTW), is based on design for excellence (DFX) methodology. In order to illustrate and validate the DTW approach, it is applied to an end-effector that shall embed a set functions related to the riveting operation of aircraft fuselage barrels. The designed end-effector is compared with similar products described in the literature or available in the market. The results show that DTW is an efficient approach that not only provides low-weight solutions but also maintains a compromise with other requirements. On the other hand, the method is sensitive to the choice of relevance and quality factors that depends on the knowledge of the design team about the product under design.