On Redundancy Resolution in Minimum-Time Trajectory Planning of Robotic Manipulators Along Predefined End-Effector Paths

Trajectory planning is a crucial aspect of economically viable operation of robotic manipulators. For given geometric paths, appropriate joint trajectories are required such that their duration is minimized while physical and technological constraints are fulfilled. Kinematically redundant manipulators are increasingly employed for industrial tasks due to their increased work space and dexterity. In this paper, a novel inverse kinematics based optimization approach for computing minimum-time trajectories is introduced that optimally exploits a manipulator’s kinematical redundancy. Using the example of a planar manipulator, the presented method is shown to outperform conventional optimal control approaches regarding robustness and the resulting trajectory characteristics.