Novel Trajectory Planning Strategy for Industrial Manipulator to Enhance Vibrational Behavior and Productivity: Virtual Model and Experiments

This paper aims to investigate the vibrational behavior of the industrial manipulator Racer 7-1.4 produced by COMAU SpA to find a new trajectory planning strategy allowing to improve the productivity without neglecting the precision. Starting from the definition of a 9DoF rigid model with lumped parameter, the first natural frequency of the system has been identified in seven reference positions. Then, several static and dynamic simulations have been carried out to reach out to define a closed form analytic function to predict the entity of the vibration during the trajectory planning. It points out that the optimal way to define a move is to set the move duration at twice of the period of oscillation related to the first mode of vibration of the system. This strategy has been confirmed by experimental tests, allowing the decrease in vibration in addition to execution time reduction.