A Solution to Slosh-free Robot Trajectory Optimization

Abstract

This paper is about fast slosh-free fluid transportation. Existing approaches are either computationally heavy or only suitable for specific robots and container shapes. We model the end effector as a point mass suspended by a spherical pendulum and study the requirements for slosh-free motion and the validity of the point mass model. In this approach, slosh-free trajectories are generated by controlling the pendulum's pivot and simulating the motion of the point mass. We cast the trajectory optimization problem as a quadratic program-this strategy can be used to obtain valid control inputs. Through simulations and experiments on a 7 DoF Franka Emika Panda robot we validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.