AN APPROACH TO TIME-OPTIMAL, SMOOTH AND COLLISION-FREE PATH PLANNING IN A 2 ROBOT ARM ENVIRONMENT

An approach to time-optimal smooth and collision-free path planning fo r two industrial robot arms is presented, where path planning and join t trajectory generation are integrated. A suitable objective function, combining the requirements of time optimality and path smoothness, is proposed, which is subject to the continuity of joint trajectories, l imits on their rates of change and collision-free constraints. Fast an d effective collision detection for the arms is achieved using the Kuh n-Tucker conditions along with the convexity of the distance function and relying on geometrical relationships between cylinders. Nonlinear optimization is used to solve this path planning problem. The feasibil ity of this method is illustrated both by simulation and by experiment al results.