Path planning based on the analytical inverse kinematics of the rail-mounted industrial robot for continuous- trajectory tracking

In this paper, the path planning method of a redundant robotic work cell consisting of an overhead linear rail and a FANUC 6-joint robot mounted on it is studied for the continuous-trajectory tracking task. The existence of the solution of the inverse kinematics problem of the rail-mounted industrial robot (RMIR) is discussed and an analytical redundancy resolution scheme for RMIR is proposed based on the workspace. The path planning method with the performance evaluation mechanism makes the end-effector (EE) of robot reach the target position and posture and avoid joint limit, which makes the best of the redundant degree of freedom to improve the robot performance. The results of simulation and experiment prove that the proposed method is effective in the application of the long and closed-trajectory tracking. The above research findings are integrated into the robot off-line programming (OLP) software developed based on the UG platform and successfully applied to the robotic induction hardening for the chamfers of the large automobile panel dies.