Redundant robot trajectory optimization via a kinematic approximation approach

Many industrial robot applications are functionally redundant, so the robot kinematic chain has more degrees of freedom than the ones required by the task. This feature can be exploited to optimize the task by choosing convenient robot configurations at the working points, according to a design goal. In this paper, the case of a SCARA robot performing a redundant task along an assigned path is considered. A novel trajectory optimization technique is presented, which relies on the kinematic model and on the choice of a single parameter, thus reducing the computational effort. Numerical results are discussed.