Motion Planning Leveraging High-Speed Sensors for Conventional Industrial Manipulator

High temporal resolution sensors have become increasingly widespread in recent years, enabling detailed and accurate observation of fast physical phenomena and contribut- ing to the understanding of their essential properties. However, a fundamental challenge remains in bridging the temporal resolution gap between such sensors and conventional industrial robots. Typical high-speed visual feedback control require all system components to operate at high speed, inherently restricting their applicability to phenomena within the robot’s dynamic capabilities. As a result, valuable high-speed sensing data often cannot be fully utilized, especially when target phenomena evolve faster than the robot can respond. This study proposes a novel motion planning method that extracts essential, task-relevant information from high-speed sensor data to bridge the timescale gap between sensors and robots. Based on the extracted information, feedforward control is executed with consideration of the robot’s motion characteristics. To explore practical solutions, we developed an integrated system combining a high-speed camera and a proximity sensor module ―both with existing applications in robotics―with a general- purpose industrial robot and gripper. A case study involving the grasping of a pendulum-swinging object by a low-speed robot demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach in utilizing high-frequency measurements for tasks beyond the limits of conventional feedback control.