Online approximate Cartesian path trajectory planning for robotic manipulators

To achieve online Cartesian space trajectory planning, the authors present methods for approximating Cartesian paths by recursive joint trajectories. Systematic procedures are proposed for approximating an arbitrary smooth Cartesian path by concatenated line segments and for selecting intermediate knot points along the line segments. Two recursive joint trajectory planning algorithms are derived using quartic spline interpolation. The proposed approach is illustrated by a numerical example