A fast speed planning algorithm for robotic manipulators

TL;DR

This paper introduces a linear-complexity algorithm for time-optimal speed planning of robotic manipulators along a given path, ensuring constraints are met and outperforming existing methods in speed.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, fast algorithm for speed planning that achieves linear complexity, improving computational efficiency over previous approaches.

Findings

Algorithm has linear complexity with respect to N and degrees of freedom.

Numerical tests demonstrate significantly faster performance than existing algorithms.

Ensures velocity, acceleration, force, and torque constraints are satisfied.

Abstract

We consider the speed planning problem for a robotic manipulator. In particular, we present an algorithm for finding the time-optimal speed law along an assigned path that satisfies velocity and acceleration constraints and respects the maximum forces and torques allowed by the actuators. The addressed optimization problem is a finite dimensional reformulation of the continuous-time speed optimization problem, obtained by discretizing the speed profile with N points. The proposed algorithm has linear complexity with respect to N and to the number of degrees of freedom. Such complexity is the best possible for this problem. Numerical tests show that the proposed algorithm is significantly faster than algorithms already existing in literature.