Smooth orientation planning is beneficial for the working performance and service life of industrial robots, keeping robots from violent impacts and shocks caused by discontinuous orientation planning. Nevertheless, the popular used quaternion interpolations can hardly guarantee C² continuity for multiorientation interpolation. Aiming at the problem, an efficient quaternion interpolation methodology based on logarithmic quaternion was proposed. Quaternions of more than two key orientations were expressed in the exponential forms of quaternion. These four-dimensional quaternions in space S³, when logarithms were taken for them, could be converted to three-dimensional points in space R³ so that B-spline interpolation could be applied freely to interpolate. The core formulas that B-spline interpolated points were mapped to quaternion were founded since B-spline interpolated point vectors were decomposed to the product of unitized forms and exponents were taken for them. The proposed methodology made B-spline curve applicable to quaternion interpolation through dimension reduction and the high-order continuity of the B-spline curve remained when B-spline interpolated points were mapped to quaternions. The function for reversely finding control points of B-spline curve with zero curvature at endpoints was derived, which helped interpolation curve become smoother and sleeker. The validity and rationality of the principle were verified by the study case. For comparison, the study case was also analyzed by the popular quaternion interpolations, Spherical Linear Interpolation (SLERP) and Spherical and Quadrangle (SQUAD). The comparison results demonstrated the proposed methodology had higher smoothness than SLERP and SQUAD and thus would provide better protection for robot end-effector from violent impacts led by unreasonable multiorientation interpolation. It should be noted that the proposed methodology can be extended to multiorientation quaternion interpolation with higher continuity than the second order.

As for industrial robots’ point-to-point joint motion planning with constrained velocity, cubic polynomial planning has the problem of discontinuous acceleration; quintic polynomial planning requires acceleration to be specified in advance, which will likely cause velocity to fluctuate largely because appropriate acceleration assigned in advance is hardly acquired. Aiming at these problems, a modified cubic Hermite interpolation for joint motion planning was proposed. In the proposed methodology, knots of cubic Hermite interpolation need to be reconfigured according to the initial knots. The formulas for how to build new knots were put forward after derivation. Using the newly-built knots instead of initial knots for cubic Hermite interpolation, joint motion planning was carried out. The purpose was that the joint planning not only satisfied the displacement and velocity constraints at the initial knots but also guaranteed C² continuity and less velocity fluctuation. A study case was given to verify the rationality and effectiveness of the methodology. Compared with the other two planning methods, it proved that the raised problems can be solved effectively via the proposed methodology, which is beneficial to the working performance and service life of industrial robots.