On Trajectory Planning for Flexible Robots

Abstract A computational technique, based on radial basis functions, for deriving trajectories for a single link flexible robot arm, is presented in this paper. Using an approximation based on radial basis functions and point collocation method, the trajectory planning problem is transformed into a linear least-squares problem. This technique is easy to implement and is computationally efficient. Furthermore, the trajectories obtained do not produce any residual vibration at the end of the move. A computer simulation based on a finite-element model indicates the effectiveness of the proposed technique.