Motion PlanningIntermediate
RUL-Aware RRT*: Degradation-Balanced Motion Planning for Robotic Manipulators
This preprint introduces RUL-aware RRT*, a motion planner that adds joint remaining-useful-life penalties to standard RRT* so a robotic manipulator distributes wear across actuators. In simulated UR5 pick-and-place trials it extended time-to-first-failure by 48–56% in a localized-degradation scenario, and improved bottleneck lifetime by 23.8–29.2% in a heterogeneous-degradation scenario. It matters because it connects predictive maintenance to path planning rather than leaving health information at the monitoring layer.