Path Planning of Free Floating Prismatic-Jointed Manipulators

Abstract

Reaching a desired position with a specific orientationin space by a robot, mounted on a freely floating base, is an importantpath planning and control problem. Research in this area has mainlyconcentrated on the use of revolute-jointed serial manipulators. It iswell known that the dynamic equations of such manipulators are quitecomplex.

In this paper, we propose the use of a 6-link fully prismatic-jointedrobot to achieve a desired position and orientation in space instead of arevolute-jointed robot. The use of pure prismatic-jointed robots forsuch a purpose is counter intuitive. On earth, such a structure is unableto provide a desired orientation to the end-effector. However, it can beshown that in space, arbitrary end-effector orientations are possible.Due to the relative simplicity of kinematics, dynamics and workspace ofprismatic-jointed robots compared to revolute-jointed robots, their useresults in significant computational advantages in path planning andcontrol.

Also, in this paper, we adopt an unconventional motion planning methodthat avoids inversion of the Jacobian matrix and results in singularityfree paths for the end-effector. In this method, the joint trajectoriesare considered to be modal sums of basis functions of time. Within this framework, constraints on jointangles and joint rates can be imposed. The results are demonstratedwith an example of a 6-link fully prismatic-jointed robot.