  The task-specific optimization of robotic systems has long been divided into
the optimization of the robot and the optimization of the environment. In this
letter, we argue that these two problems are interdependent and should be
treated as such. To this end, we present a unified problem formulation that
enables for the simultaneous optimization of both the robot kinematics and the
environment. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach by jointly
optimizing a robotic milling system. To compare our approach to the state of
the art we also optimize the robot kinematics and environment separately. The
results show that our approach outperforms the state of the art and that
simultaneous optimization leads to a much better solution.
