Trajectory planning in workspaces with obstacles taking into account the dynamic robot behaviour

In this paper a trajectory planner for industrial robots that have to operate in workspaces with obstacles is presented. The proposed planner is based on an algorithm which is capable of obtaining a sequence of feasible robot configurations from which a path between the given initial and the goal configurations to be reached is obtained. From this sequence of configurations, the temporal evolution of the joint variables is obtained in agreement with an optimality criterium such as the minimum time. In order to connect the geometric aspects considered in the path planning with the objectives of the trajectory planning that are related to the dynamical behaviour of the robot, the necessary evolution times between adjacent configurations have been included in the path planning stage. Examples are shown considering a robot Puma 560 operating in workspaces with different degrees of complexity. (C) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.