Parallelarme

Parallelarme is a concept and emerging technology describing the coordinated use of multiple robotic manipulators operating in parallel to perform tasks in a shared workspace. It combines parallel kinematics, cooperative control, and redundancy management to improve productivity, precision, and resilience.

The term blends parallel and arm-related imagery, reflecting synchronization of several arms rather than a single end-effector. It arose from cooperative manipulation research and has been demonstrated in industrial and laboratory settings since the early 2010s.

Core ideas include distributed task allocation, synchronized trajectory planning, collision avoidance, impedance control, and fault-tolerant operation. A central planner coordinates arms while each maintains local sensing to adapt to uncertainties. Redundancy enables operation after partial failures and aids heavy-object handling.

Design options cover configurations with fully parallel actuators, modular arms on a shared base, and soft or rigid grippers. Control architectures mix centralized planning with decentralized execution and may use optimization-based methods or supervisory control.

Applications span manufacturing, warehousing, minimally invasive surgery, and disaster-response robotics. Variants such as Parallelarme-Soft, Parallelarme-Opt, and Parallelarme-Gravity address soft robotics, optimization-based control, and gravity-aware manipulation in space or tilted environments.

In academia and industry, Parallelarme is described as a framework or design paradigm rather than a single product, with ongoing work on standards for interfaces and safety guarantees.

See also: cooperative robotics, parallel robots, multi-robot systems.