Trajectory Planning and Speed Control for a Two-Link Rigid Manipulator

A two-phase trajectory planning for a two-link rigid manipulator was presented. The problem was solved in two stages. First a geometric trajectory planning using cubic spline function was performed to construct an initial trajectory. The motion constraints (maximum angular velocity and maximum angular acceleration) were met using a linear scaling of the time variable. Then a new approach was applied to speed control (fitting the manipulator's tip velocity to a pre-specified profile) using a nonlinear scaling of the time variable. It was demonstrated that the specified velocity profile can be followed very closely. Simulation results were presented which show the convergence and effectiveness of the path planning approach.