Robot Time-Optimal Trajectory Planning Based on Quintic Polynomial Interpolation and Improved Harris Hawks Algorithm

Abstract

Time-optimal trajectory planning is one of the most important ways to improve work efficiency and reduce cost and plays an important role in practical application scenarios of robots. Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the running time of the trajectory. In this paper, a robot time-optimal trajectory planning method based on quintic polynomial interpolation and an improved Harris hawks algorithm is proposed. Interpolation with a quintic polynomial has a smooth angular velocity and no acceleration jumps. It has widespread application in the realm of robot trajectory planning. However, the interpolation time is usually obtained by testing experience, and there is no unified criterion to determine it, so it is difficult to obtain the optimal trajectory running time. Because the Harris hawks algorithm adopts a multi-population search strategy, compared with other swarm intelligent optimization algorithms such as the particle swarm optimization algorithm and the fruit fly optimization algorithm, it can avoid problems such as single population diversity, low mutation probability, and easily falling into the local optimum. Therefore, the Harris hawks algorithm is introduced to overcome this problem. However, because some key parameters in HHO are simply set to constant or linear attenuation, efficient optimization cannot be achieved. Therefore, the nonlinear energy decrement strategy is introduced in the basic Harris hawks algorithm to improve the convergence speed and accuracy. The results show that the optimal time of the proposed algorithm is reduced by 1.1062 s, 0.5705 s, and 0.3133 s, respectively, and improved by 33.39%, 19.66%, and 12.24% compared with those based on particle swarm optimization, fruit fly algorithm, and Harris hawks algorithms, respectively. In multiple groups of repeated experiments, compared with particle swarm optimization, the fruit fly algorithm, and the Harris hawks algorithm, the computational efficiency was reduced by 4.7019 s, 1.2016 s, and 0.2875 s, respectively, and increased by 52.40%, 21.96%, and 6.30%. Under the optimal time, the maximum angular displacement, angular velocity, and angular acceleration of each joint trajectory meet the constraint conditions, and their average values are only 75.51%, 38.41%, and 28.73% of the maximum constraint. Finally, the robot end-effector trajectory passes through the pose points steadily and continuously under the cartesian space optimal time.