  Robots are widely used in industry due to their efficiency and high accuracy
in performance. One of the most intriguing issues in manufacturing stage of
production line is to minimize significantly high percentage of energy consumed
by these robot manipulators. The energy optimal control of robotic manipulators
is a complex problem, as it requires a deep understanding of the robot's
kinematics and dynamic behaviors. This paper propose a novel method of energy
efficient path planning of an industrial robot arm in a workspace with multiple
obstacles using differential evolution (DE) algorithm. The path-planning
problem is formulated as an optimization problem with an aim to determine the
shortest and energy optimal path of the robot arm from its given initial
position to the predefined goal location, without hitting obstacles.
Application of such evolutionary algorithms in trajectory planning is
advantageous because the exact solution to the path-planning problem is not
always available beforehand and must be determined dynamically. Experiments
undertaken reveal that the DE-based path-planning algorithm outperforms its
contenders in a significant manner.
