Design of the end-effector tool attachment for robot arm with multiple reconfigurable goals

A custom-made robot arm that is specially designed for a given task is better than a general-purpose robot arm based on the performance index it is designed for. In industries, however, a general-purpose robot arm is prevalently used since it can perform over several and varying tasks. Because of this, a custom-made robot arm becomes impractical due to its high fabrication cost. In this study, we propose the design of tool attachment as a cost-effective and alternative method for improving the performance of a general-purpose robot arm. Wherein, the task completion time is the performance index in designing the tool attachment. A tool attachment, a passive linkage attached between the end-effector of robot arm and tool, is customized for a given task. We showed that the proposed method is effective by employing it in a task with multiple reconfigurable goals, or goals that can be rearranged and can be positioned by a table.