Optimal Continuous Path Planning for Seven-Degrees-of-Freedom Robots

The paper addresses the problem of end effector trajectory planning and control of seven degrees of freedom (DOF) kinematically redundant robots. An off-line optimal continuous path planning method is developed for on-line control at joint level. The specified end effector path is approximated by a set of location nodes selected on the desired path. The motion control of the robot is provided by cubic polynomial interpolation at joint level. The proposed approach to trajectory planning of kinematically redundant robots consists of obtaining an optimal set of nodes which guarantees minimum deviation from the desired Cartesian path. The redundant DOF of the robot is used as a constrained variable in the optimization search. The method is illustrated in an example.