A novel path following control framework for robot manipulators using a rotation minimizing frame

摘要

We describe a novel path following pose control framework for articulated robots which is needed for many material handling and surface finishing where constant speed travel is desirable. Using a rotation minimizing frame (RMF) associated with the geometric path, we develop a path following position control law by projecting the robot translation states onto the RMF and based on an analytical description of the reference orientation dynamics of the RMF, we derive a stabilizing controller for orientation control along the path with the Modified Rodrigues parameters to avoid the unwinding problem encountered when rotations of more than 180 degrees are encountered. The effectiveness of the proposed path following framework is verified via simulations on a torque actuated KUKA iiwa robot using a physics-based simulation engine called Bullet.