Construction of minimum time joint trajectory for an industrial manipulator using FTM

The path of an industrial manipulator in a crowded workspace generally consists of 8 set of Cartesian straight line path connecting a set of two adjacent points. To achieve the Cartesian straight line path is, however, a nontrivial task and an alternative approach is to place enough intermediate points along a desired path and linearly interpolate between these points in the joint space. A method is developed that determines the subtravelling- and the transition-time such that the total travelling time for this path is minimized subject to the maximum joint velocities and accelerations constraint. The method is based on the application of nonlinear programming technique, i.e., FTM (Flexible Tolerance Method). These results are simulated on a digital computer using a six-joint revolute manipulator to show their applications.