Generation of Smooth Cartesian Paths Using Radial Basis Functions

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the problem of generating smooth Cartesian paths for robots passing through a sequence of waypoints. For interpolation between waypoints we propose to use radial basis functions (RBF). First, we describe RBF based on Gaussian kernel functions and how the weights are calculated. The path generation considers also boundary conditions for velocity and accelerations. Then we present how RBF parameters influence the shape of the generated path. The proposed RBF method is compared with paths generated by a spline and linear interpolation. The results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed method, which is offering a good alternative to generate smooth Cartesian paths.