Study on selection of a 6R manipulator's configuration in off-line programming

This paper presents a problem of selection of a robotic manipulator configuration in the course of an end- effector static path planning with the use of off-line programming technique. The aim of the research was to carry out exemplary analyses of path planning to study problems related to manipulator configuration selection. A kinematic structure of the articulated manipulator was chosen for the numerical simulation purpose. Two types of paths were considered. For analysis of the Point-to-Point (PTP) positioning a closed-loop path composed of 7 poses was chosen. A considerable variation of the end-effector orientation along the path was simulated. The author suggested determination of the shortest path as the one that is the most suitable for application. The conducted simulation showed that a change of configuration of the manipulator wrist (flip) was advantageous for shortening of PTP paths so it should be allowed during the PTP paths planning. The continuous positioning was analyzed on an example of a rectangular (linear-segment) path. Again, considerable variation of the end-effector orientation was assumed. The results of the continuous path planning showed that appropriate location of path in a robotic manipulator workspace is necessary for obtaining feasible continuous paths. The reported results of the study might help improving automatic configuration assignment procedures of the static path planning with the use of off-line programming technique.