ORIGINAL ARTICLE Optimal robot placement using response surface method Behnam Kamrani & Viktor Berbyuk & Daniel Wäppling & Uwe Stickelmann & Xiaolong Feng Received: 24 April 2005 / Accepted: 27 October 2008 / Published online: 14 November 2008 # Springer-Verlag London Limited 2008 Abstract This paper is concerned with a new approach for optimal placement of a prescribed task in the workspace of a robotic manipulator. The approach is resulted by applying response surface method on concept of path translation and path rotation. A robotic optimization tool based on this approach is developed as an add-in to RobotStudio. The methodology has been carefully verified by optimizing the position of several kinds of industrial robots and paths in four showcases to attain minimum cycle time. The results indicate that an increase in productivity up to 37%, compared to the admissible location with the highest cycle time, is achieved by optimally positioning the task in the robot workspace. Keywords Robot optimal placement . Cycle time . Offline programming . Robot cell design . Response surface method . Optimization 1 Introduction In industrial application, a robotic manipulator performs a repetitive sequence of movements. Typical application exam- ples are welding, material handling, machine tending, cutting, painting, and gluing. The sequence of the movements can be referred to as a robot task. The time duration during which the sequence of the movements is completed is normally referred to as cycle time. A robot task is usually defined by a robot program or a robot path consisting of a set of robot positions (either joint positions or tool center point positions) and corresponding set of motion definitions between adjacent robot positions. Therefore, the path position and a robot task position can be used interchangeably. The terminology of path translation and path rotation used in this work represents translational or rotational relocation of the robot relative to positions in a robot program. It is of general interest to perform the path motion as fast as possible. Minimizing motion time can significantly shorten cycle time, increase the productivity, improve machine utilization, and thus make automation affordable in applications for which throughput and cost effectiveness is of major concern. Considering the high number of task run within a specific time span, for instance 1 year, the importance of reducing cycle time in a small amount such as a few percent will be more understandable. Offline programming of robotic work cells has become a valuable tool for the work-cell designers. However, current robot programming systems do not usually provide func- Int J Adv Manuf Technol (2009) 44:201–210 DOI 10.1007/s00170-008-1824-7 B. Kamrani (*) MSC.Software Sweden AB, Hängpilsgatan 6, 42677 Gothenburg, Sweden e-mail: bkamrani@gmail.com V. Berbyuk Chalmers University of Technology, 41296 Gothenburg, Sweden D. Wäppling ABB Robotics, Hydrovägen 10, 72168 Västerås, Sweden U. Stickelmann RWTH Aachen University, Nütheimer Str. 160, 52076 Aachen, Germany X. Feng ABB Corporate Research, Forskargränd 8, 72178 Västerås, Sweden