Time-optimal trajectory generation for path following with bounded acceleration and velocity

Abstract

This paper presents a novel method to generate the time-optimal trajectory that exactly follows a given differentiable joint-space path within given bounds on joint accelerations and velocities. We also present a path preprocessing method to make nondifferentiable paths differentiable by adding circular blends. We introduce improvements to existing work that make the algorithm more robust in the presence of numerical inaccuracies. Furthermore we validate our methods on hundreds of randomly generated test cases on simulated and real 7-DOF robot arms. Finally, we provide open source software that implements our algorithms.