Trajectory planning of a spatial flexible manipulator for vibration suppression

Vibration decreases operational accuracy and productivity of flexible manipulators, and trajectory planning is an effective way to suppress vibration. However, the existing trajectory planning methods can only suppress vibration of planar flexible manipulators. In this paper, a trajectory planning method is proposed to suppress vibration of spatial flexible manipulators. Firstly, the dynamic models of each link of the flexible manipulator are established separately. Then with the constraint equations, the dynamic model of the flexible manipulator is established as a Differential Algebraic Equation (DAE). Secondly, the trajectory functions are designed as quintic polynomials, and the conditions are deduced to satisfy acceleration limits of each joint. Finally, the trajectory planning problem is transferred to an optimal problem. Particle Swam Optimization (PSO) is adopted to solve the optimal problem. Numerical simulation is conducted to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.