Trajectory Optimization for High-Power Robots with Motor Temperature Constraints

摘要

Modeling heat transfer is an important problem in high-power electrical robots as the increase of motor temperature leads to both lower energy efficiency and the risk of motor damage. Power consumption itself is a strong restriction in these robots especially for battery-powered robots such as those used in disaster-response. In this paper, we propose to reduce power consumption and temperature for robots with high-power DC actuators without cooling systems only through motion planning. We first propose a parametric thermal model for brushless DC motors which accounts for the relationship between internal and external temperature and motor thermal resistances. Then, we introduce temperature variables and a thermal model constraint on a trajectory optimization problem which allows for power consumption minimization or the enforcing of temperature bounds during motion planning. We show that the approach leads to qualitatively different motion compared to typical cost function choices, as well as energy consumption gains of up to 40%.