Real-time position path smoothing for robotic manipulators by constructing Composite Trajectory Spline

Aiming at smoothing discontinuous corners in robotic tool paths, a novel spline named “Composite Trajectory Spline”(CT-Spline) is proposed in this paper. Based on CT-Spline, the real-time position path smoothing for robotic manipulators is realized. CT-Spline enables analytical trajectory planning and interpolation without curve length computation, significantly enhancing trajectory generation efficiency and avoiding numerical errors. By directly controlling resultant trajectory acceleration, CT-Spline avoids decomposing it into tangential and normal accelerations, ensuring adherence to the maximum acceleration constraint while fully utilizing acceleration potential. The geometric shape of CT-Spline is determined by three control points and a trajectory model. This paper further develops C1 and C3 continuous CT-Splines based on two different trajectory models, combined with a velocity look-ahead algorithm to achieve real-time local smoothing of path corners. Additionally, an adaptive control algorithm of smoothing error is introduced to dynamically maximize trajectory velocity. Simulations and experiments validate the effectiveness of CT-Spline, and demonstrate that the proposed C3 continuous trajectory smoothing method has several advantages over the method based on Pythagorean-hodograph splines in terms of kinematic constraints, velocity, smoothing errors, and real-time performance.