Systolic array realization of a trajectory planning algorithm in robotics

A parallel pipeline architecture using systolic arrays is proposed for a collision-free trajectory planning algorithm. A systolic array for realizing the pseudo-inverse of a Jacobian matrix is proposed, and the systolic design for a minimum norm trajectory planner and collision-free trajectory planner are described. The computer system architecture can compute the collision-free trajectory of a robot fast enough for real-time operation. Specifically, the computation time needed to determine the trajectory of the end-effector using the systolic array is about 21.8 mu s, which is very short when compared to the reaction time of the robotic manipulator. Hence, the structure is well suited for real-time operations.<>