Planning of collision-free movements of a manipulator with dynamic constraints

In this paper the joint trajectories of a manipulator, which avoids obstacles in the work space and follows a given path, are planned considering the dynamics of the manipulator system. The planning problem has four types of constraints: collision-free conditions, structural joints movable ranges, joints velocity limits and actuators input limits. This problem is formulated using artificial potentials which give feasible joint movements under these constraints. An algorithm using the linear programming is given to solve the problem. This algorithm enables the successive adjustment of the weighting factors of artificial potentials and gives the desired joint trajectories. The algorithm is effectively applied to the planar movements of a manipulator with four links and four degrees of freedom.