A Fast and Unified Method to Find a Minimum-Jerk Robot Joint Trajectory Using Particle Swarm Optimization

In robot trajectory planning, finding the minimum-jerk joint trajectory is a crucial issue in robotics because most robots are asked to perform a smooth trajectory. Jerk, the third derivative of joint position of a trajectory, influences how smoothly and efficiently a robot moves. Thus, the minimum-jerk joint trajectory makes the robot control algorithm simple and robust. To find the minimum-jerk joint trajectory, it has been formulated as an optimization problem constrained by joint inter-knot parameters including initial joint displacement and velocity, intermediate joint displacement, and final joint displacement and velocity. In this paper, we propose a fast and unified approach based on particle swarm optimization (PSO) with K-means clustering to solve the near-optimal solution of a minimum-jerk joint trajectory. This work differs from previous work in its fast computation and unified methodology. Computer simulations were conducted and showed the competent performance of our approach on a six degree-of-freedom robot manipulator.