Motion Planning of a Welding Robot for Cooperative Tasks with a Sequential Positioning Device

Abstract

This paper deals with the motion planning problem of an industrial robot to achieve welding tasks working in cooperation with a positioning table. We consider that sequential displacements must be achieved by the robot and the table until finish the whole task. Thus, a method is proposed to find the successive placements that must be attained by the cooperative table in order to locate the workpiece in such a way that the kinematic performance of the robot be optimized during the task. The method is applied for a welding robot during the tracking of a 3D path. Simulation studies show the efficacy of the proposed method.