Trajectory Planning Using the Ferguson Curve Model and Curvature Theory of a Ruled Surface

The trajectory of a robot end-effector is completely described by a ruled surface and a spin angle about the ruling of the ruled surface. In this way the differential properties of motion of the end-effector are obtained from the well-known curvature theory of a ruled surface. The robot can then be programmed so that the end-effector will follow the prescribed trajectory with high accuracy. In the case where the ruled surface cannot be described by an explicit analytic function, the ruled surface may be represented by a geometric modeling technique. Since a ruled surface can be expressed in terms of a single parameter, a curve generating technique is used to represent the ruled surface. The technique presented in this paper is the Ferguson curve model which guarantees that the trajectory will pass through all of the set points and will have curvature continuity at each set point. To illustrate the proposed method of robot trajectory planning, a practical example is included in the paper.