A NEW METHOD OF DISCRETE TRAJECTORY PLANNING FOR ROBOT MANIPULATORS

This paper presents a method of segmental discrete trajectory planning for a robot manipulator. In this method, consistency of the time inte rval at the trajectory planning stage with the sampling time interval determined at the online trajectory tracking stage is taken into accou nt. The time history of joint position and velocity along the given pa th is planned by means of nonlinear programming technique in order to satisfy dynamic constraints and optimize the given performance index. The planning example for Stanford Manipulator with 6 DOF shows the eff iciency of this method. In comparison with another such method, the ne w discrete trajectory planning method reduces computation memory and r un time sharply, and can be performed on ordinary microcomputers.