Obstacle Avoidance and Multitarget Tracking of a Super Redundant Modular Manipulator Based on Bezier Curve and Particle Swarm Optimization

Abstract A super redundant serpentine manipulator has slender structure and multiple degrees of freedom. It can travel through narrow spaces and move in complex spaces. This manipulator is composed of many modules that can form different lengths of robot arms for different application sites. The increase in degrees of freedom causes the inverse kinematics of redundant manipulator to be typical and immensely increases the calculation load in the joint space. This paper presents an integrated optimization method to solve the path planning for obstacle avoidance and discrete trajectory tracking of a super redundant manipulator. In this integrated optimization, path planning is established on a Bezier curve, and particle swarm optimization is adopted to adjust the control points of the Bezier curve with the kinematic constraints of manipulator. A feasible obstacle avoidance path is obtained along with a discrete trajectory tracking by using a follow-the-leader strategy. The relative distance between each two discrete path points is limited to reduce the fitting error of the connecting rigid links to the smooth curve. Simulation results show that this integrated optimization method can rapidly search for the appropriate trajectory to guide the manipulator in obtaining the target while achieving obstacle avoidance and meeting joint constraints. The proposed algorithm is suitable for 3D space obstacle avoidance and multitarget path tracking.