Generation of dynamic motions under continuous constraints: Efficient computation using B-Splines and Taylor polynomials

This paper proposes a new computation method to solve semi-infinite optimization problems for motion planning of robotic systems. Usually, this problem is solved by means of time-grid discretization of the continuous constraints. Unfortunately, discretization may lead to unsafe motions since there is no guarantee of constraint satisfaction between time samples. First, we show that constraints such as joint position and velocity do not need time-discretization to be checked. Then, we present the computation method based on Taylor polynomials to evaluate more complex constraints over time-intervals. This method also applies to continuous equality constraints, to continuous maximum derivative constraint, and to compute the cost function.