A major field of industrial robot applications deals with repetitive tasks that alternate between operating points. For these so-called pick-and-place operations, parallel kinematic manipulators (PKM) are frequently employed. These tasks tend to automatically run for a long period of time and therefore minimizing energy consumption is always of interest. Recent research addresses this topic by the use of elastic elements and particularly series elastic actuators (SEA). This paper explores the possibilities of minimizing energy consumption of SEA actuated PKM performing pick-and-place tasks. The basic idea is to excite eigenmotions that result from the actuator springs and exploit their oscillating characteristics. To this end, a prescribed cyclic pick-and-place operation is analyzed and a dynamic model of SEA driven PKM is derived. Subsequently, an energy minimizing optimal control problem is formulated where operating trajectories as well as SEA stiffnesses are optimized simultaneously. Here, optimizing the actuator stiffness does not account for variable stiffness actuators. It serves as a tool for the design and dimensioning process. The hypothesis on energy reduction is tested on two (parallel) robot applications where redundant actuation is also addressed. The results confirm the validity of this approach.

Reorienting objects by using supports is a practical yet challenging manipulation task. Owing to the intricate geometry of objects and the constrained feasible motions of the robot, multiple manipulation steps are required for object reorientation. In this work, we propose a pipeline for predicting various object placements from point clouds. This pipeline comprises three stages: a pose generation stage, followed by a pose refinement stage, and culminating in a placement classification stage. We also propose an algorithm to construct manipulation graphs based on point clouds. Feasible manipulation sequences are determined for the robot to transfer object placements. Both simulated and real-world experiments demonstrate that our approach is effective. The simulation results underscore our pipeline's capacity to generalize to novel objects in random start poses. Our predicted placements exhibit a 20% enhancement in accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art baseline. Furthermore, the robot finds feasible sequential steps in the manipulation graphs constructed by our algorithm to accomplish object reorientation manipulation.

Speed and precision are two major issues in robotics and in Industry of the Future (also known as Industry 4.0). Within this framework, RoMoCo research team of AS2M department at FEMTO-ST Institute has developed MiGriBot, a miniature robot able to perform 720 pick-and-place operations of sub-millimeter objects per minute. The results of this research work have been published in Science Robotics. These performances are made possible thanks to its architecture, that allows it to grip and manipulate micro-objects barely visible to the naked eye (from 40 micrometers to several hundred micrometers). In fact, where other microrobots have a rigid end-effector, MiGriBot is based on a principle with an articulated end.