Singularity Avoidance for Cart-Mounted Hand-Guided Collaborative Robots: A Variational Approach

Erica Salvato; Walter Vanzella; Gianfranco Fenu; Felice Andrea Pellegrino

doi:10.3390/robotics11040079

journal article Open Access Aug 06, 2022

Singularity Avoidance for Cart-Mounted Hand-Guided Collaborative Robots: A Variational Approach

Erica Salvato

Walter Vanzella Gianfranco Fenu

Felice Andrea Pellegrino

Robotics Vol. 11 No. 4 pp. 79 · MDPI AG

View at Publisher Save 10.3390/robotics11040079

Abstract

Most collaborative robots (cobots) can be taught by hand guiding: essentially, by manually jogging the robot, an operator teaches some configurations to be employed as via points. Based on those via points, Cartesian end-effector trajectories such as straight lines, circular arcs or splines are then constructed. Such methods can, in principle, be employed for cart-mounted cobots (i.e., when the jogging involves one or two linear axes, besides the cobot axes). However, in some applications, the sole imposition of via points in Cartesian space is not sufficient. On the contrary, albeit the overall system is redundant, (i) the via points must be reached at the taught joint configurations, and (ii) the undesirable singularity (and near-singularity) conditions must be avoided. The naive approach, consisting of setting the cart trajectory beforehand (for instance, by imposing a linear-in-time motion law that crosses the taught cart configurations), satisfies the first need, but does not guarantee the satisfaction of the second. Here, we propose an approach consisting of (i) a novel strategy for decoupling the planning of the cart trajectory and that of the robot joints, and (ii) a novel variational technique for computing the former in a singularity-aware fashion, ensuring the avoidance of a class of workspace singularity and near-singularity configurations.

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Citations

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References

Details

Published: Aug 06, 2022
Vol/Issue: 11(4)
Pages: 79
License: View

Authors

E

Erica Salvato

Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy

W

Walter Vanzella

Glance Vision Technologies Srl, Area Science Park, Edificio Q, S.S. 14, Km 163.5, 34012 Trieste, Italy

G

Gianfranco Fenu

Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy

F

Felice Andrea Pellegrino

Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Trieste, 34127 Trieste, Italy; Glance Vision Technologies Srl, Area Science Park, Edificio Q, S.S. 14, Km 163.5, 34012 Trieste, Italy

Funding

Italian Ministry for Research Award: 2017YKXYXJ

Cite This Article

Erica Salvato, Walter Vanzella, Gianfranco Fenu, et al. (2022). Singularity Avoidance for Cart-Mounted Hand-Guided Collaborative Robots: A Variational Approach. Robotics, 11(4), 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/robotics11040079

Singularity Avoidance for Cart-Mounted Hand-Guided Collaborative Robots: A Variational Approach

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