Optimal trajectory planning for industrial robots

An analysis of the results of an algorithm for optimal trajectory planning of robot manipulators is described in this paper. The objective function to be minimized is a weighted sum of the integral squared jerk and the execution time. Two possible primitives for building the trajectory are considered: cubic splines or fifth-order B-splines. The proposed technique allows to set constraints on the robot motion, expressed as upper bounds on the absolute values of velocity, acceleration and jerk. The described method is then applied to a 6-d.o.f. robot (a Cartesian gantry manipulator with a spherical wrist); the results obtained using the two different primitives are presented and discussed.