A computationaly efficient approach to time-optimal control of robotic manipulators along specified paths

This paper describes a computationally very efficient method of finding the time-optimal solution to control of robotic manipulators along specified paths, Specifically speaking, this can be done through a novel way of approximating the dynamic equation for robotic manipulators. Most importantly, the time-optimal control problem corresponding to the approximated dynamic equation can be solved with O(m) elementary operations, where m is the number of grids used in the approximation process. Furthermore, we show that as the approximation is finer, the suboptimal solution converges to the true time-optimal solution at least as fast as O(1/m). Finally, some simulation results using a six degree of freedom robotic manipulator are presented to demonstrate the generality and practical use of the proposed algorithm. In simulation, actuator constraints and the non-diagonal components of the inertia matrix as well as the centrifugal and Coriolis forces are taken into full account.