Multi-waypoint trajectory planning for a welding application

[patrick-deschambault]

Hi everyone,

I’m currently exploring the use of cuRobo for robotic welding path planning. From my understanding, cuRobo mainly handles motion planning between two points (a start and an end), with the option to guide the Cartesian behavior using hold_pose_vec_weight to favor or penalize motion along certain axes. There is also much more features to make adjustment for the optimization of path, but simply said, those are the parameters I am focusing for now.

For welding applications, this is often not enough. A welding seam typically requires the robot to pass through a set of discretized poses along the joint, not just go from point A to point B. The idea would be to send a sequence of waypoints that the robot must follow accurately.

My questions are:

Is cuRobo currently capable of handling multiple Cartesian waypoints?

If not, would this fit within the current design philosophy of cuRobo, or would it require extending the core planner?

Do you see any best practices or workarounds to approximate this today?

I think this could be an interesting discussion for research-oriented applications, not only for welding but for other manufacturing processes, where accuracy along a path is critical.

Thanks in advance for your insights!