A Fuzzy Logic Based Finite Element Analysis for Structural Design of a 6 Axis Industrial Robot

Six axis industrial robots are widely used for carrying out various operations in industry and in the process it is subjected to varying payload conditions. This paper shows a methodology to determine the optimum value of pay load vis-à-vis the design parameters considering the criteria of reducing the material used to build the structure of industrial robot based on the finite element method (FEM). Different loads are applied at gripper and the total deformation is calculated. Finally, the weak area of the robot arm is found out and relative improving suggestions are put forward, which leads to the foundation for the optimized design. In the fuzzy-based method, the weight of each criterion and the rating of each alternative are described by using different membership functions and linguistic terms. By using this technique, the deformation is determined in accordance to load to the robotic gripper. The results of the analysis are presented and it is found that the triangular membership function is the effective one for deformation measurement as its surface plot shows a good agreement with the output result.