Joint Path Planning of the Quasi-Spherical Parallel Manipulator

This paper focuses on the quasi-Spherical Parallel Manipulator (qSPM), a master device for bilateral teleoperation for telesurgery. Conceived as a haptic device for remote center of motion operation, the qSPM control architecture has been designed to implement auxiliary features, such as a reset function that automatically positions the end effector to the workspace center. Being the reachable workspace inside the joint space non-convex, path planning is non-trivial. This paper proposes a segmented point-to-point joint trajectory planning method. The developed algorithm, conceived with due simplifications to decrease computation effort, is able to avoid any critical point within the operative workspace.