Trajectory optimization using time-separating strategy with improved PSO on mechanical arms

In order to research the way to increase the efficiency of 6-DOF articulated manipulator, a technique of optimal trajectory planning is presented. The robot's key positions were presented by a series of postures in robot linkable model, which can be transformed into joint space as composed of value points of joints, each adjacent value points were connected by a period of B-spline curves. According to the robot's mechanical structure features and joints' drive modes, a strategy that divides six joints waist, shoulder, elbow and another three axis into two time-searching groups with different fitness functions in order to adjust the optimum focus is proposed in this paper. The modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) with crossover operator is utilized to optimize the joint trajectories. The experiment results verify the rationality and the effectiveness of the proposed method.