This paper introduces the optimal design manifold as a novel approach for understanding and optimizing the design of robotic systems. Existing optimization frameworks often jointly optimize design and behavior but lack insight into why specific designs are optimal for given tasks. Additionally, a functionally optimal design may not always be the most practical to build and practicality cannot always be captured by an objective function. By defining and learning the optimal design manifold, which represents the space of all optimal solutions, we provide a systematic method for exploring the design space and selecting the most practical optimal design. We apply the optimal design manifold to robot cell layout optimization, robot design optimization, and multi-camera placement and demonstrate its effectiveness in enhancing design choices by enabling a deeper understanding of what makes a design optimal.

The task-specific optimization of robotic systems has since the inception of the field been divided into the optimization of the robot and the optimization of the layout of its workstations. 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 workstation layout. 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 optimize the robot’s kinematics and layout separately. The results show that our approach outperforms the state of the art and that simultaneous optimization leads to up to eight times better solutions.

Nowadays, the use of identity and access management systems is the norm in large organizations. Therefore, great efforts are made in science and practice to ensure that these systems will cope with their tasks in the future. However, from a scientific point of view, an important part of the systems has been neglected so far: the user who uses the systems for ordering software or authorizations daily. Therefore, this paper first examines through a survey the challenges these users face and then presents opportunities on how these challenges can be solved. For this, concepts from e-commerce are used, as there are various mechanisms which are already studied both in science and practice.