Interpolating Industrial Robot Orientation with Hermite Spline Curve Based on Logarithmic Quaternion

Abstract

Smooth orientation planning has an important influence on the working quality and service life as for industrial robot. Based on the logarithmic quaternion, a compact method to map a spline curve from Cartesian space to quaternion space is proposed, and consequently the multi-orientation smooth interpolation of quaternion is realized. Combining with the relevant example case, the detailed method and steps of multi-orientation interpolation are introduced for mapping Hermite spline curve into quaternion space, and the validity of the principle is verified by using the example case. The present multi-orientation smooth interpolation of quaternion has the characteristics of simple construction, easy implementation and intuitive understanding. The method is not only applicable to multi-orientation interpolation of quaternion with Hermite spline curve, but also can extended to the spline curves such as Bezier spline and B-spline.