Optimal Path Planning Method for a Bush Trimming Robot With a Non-Omnidirectional End-Effector

Nowadays, the operation of trimming artistic bushes is generally performed by skilled human operators without any technological support. This entails that such an operation is characterized by a variability in terms of quality and that it can be performed only with adequate weather conditions. This work addresses the problem of developing a robotized pruning workstation to accurately trim an artistic bush by kinematically modelling the cutting operation, deriving and proving the kinematic constraints which ensure a good quality of the cutting operation, and adapting and improving a state of the art coverage path planning algorithm. Such approach has been validated both numerically and experimentally, showing a consistent improvement with respect to the state of the art algorithms.