Trajectory Control for an Innovative Rapid Freeze Prototyping System

The subject of this paper is trajectory control for an Adept Cobra 600 robot, which has been retrofitted for additive ice construction. Since this application is quite different from typical SCARA applications, considerable development is needed for trajectory control and data flow. We first outline the trajectory control system requirements, as well as the limitations of the robot hardware. Different control options are proposed and their merits and demerits are discussed; the most suitable scheme is judged to be custom programming in Adept’s V+ programming language, with trajectories expressed in the Cobra 600 joint space. With this control scheme, all system requirements are met, data manipulation is most efficient, and the system is readily adaptable for planned modifications. A specific data format is needed in order to implement this control scheme; we describe how trajectory data produced with our part-slicing algorithm is converted to the format required for the V+ programs.