Trajectory coordination planning and control for robot manipulators in automated material handling and processing

Motion coordination planning and control play a crucial role in robot application to Cartesian task operations with taking into account kinematics and dynamics constraints. This paper presents a unified approach to coordination planning and control for robot position and orientation trajectories in Cartesian space. The concept of generalised robot pose is defined as the robot configuration consisting of position and orientation, in which the orientation is described by a vector equivalent to the rotational angular displacement. The robot pose ruled surface is formed as a three-dimensional motion locus of its configuration vector. The unified treatment of the end-effector positions and orientations is based on the robot pose ruled surface concept and used in trajectory interpolations. The coordination planning of pose trajectories for the robot end effector is accomplished by generating and optimising the pose ruled surface under the constraints of kinematics and dynamics performances. The coordination control is implemented through controlling the motion laws of two end points of the orientation vector and calculating the coordinates of instantaneous corresponding points. The simulation experiment using PUMA 560 robot in arc welding and surface finishing processes are carried out to verify the feasibility of the proposed approach and demonstrate the capabilities of generation and control models.