Trajectory planning to open valves for dual-arm robots

To perform the opening valve task in the DRC (Darpa Robotics Challenge), trajectory planning for dual-arm of the humanoid robot is an important issue under the condition of constrained position and pose of middle points in the trajectory. Different approaches to open valves have been investigated in this study. For dual-arm work, the method of cubic angle curve interpolation in plane circular arc is proposed. By analyzing the workspace of the dual-arm, a suitable space is computed for the legs to coordinated movement to make arms work effectively. The simulation and experiment results show that the velocity and acceleration are continuous, smooth and little position error induced by applying the developed interpolation method. The methods are simple and practical, and can improve the dual-arm robot coordination largely.