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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review the progress made in arc welding automation using trajectory planning, seam tracking and control methodologies. Design/methodology/approach – This paper discusses key issues in trajectory planning towards achieving full automation of arc welding robots. The identified issues in trajectory planning are real-time control, optimization methods, seam tracking and control methodologies. Recent research is considered and brief conclusions are drawn. Findings – The major difficulty towards realizing a fully intelligent robotic arc welding system remains an optimal blend and good understanding of trajectory planning, seam tracking and advanced control methodologies. An intelligent trajectory tracking ability is strongly required in robotic arc welding, due to the positional errors caused by several disturbances that prevent the development of quality welds. An exciting prospect will be the creation of an effective hybrid optimization technique which is expected to lead to new scientific knowledge by combining robotic systems with artificial intelligence. Originality/value – This paper illustrates the vital role played by optimization methods for trajectory design in arc robotic welding automation, especially the non-gradient approaches (those based on certain characteristics and behaviour of biological, molecular, swarm of insects and neurobiological systems). Effective trajectory planning techniques leading to real-time control and sensing systems leading to seam tracking have also been studied.

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The problem of trajectory planning is relevant for the proper use of costly robotic systems to mitigate undesirable effects such as vibration and even wear on the mechanical structure of the system. The objective of this study is to design trajectories that are devoid of collision, velocity, acceleration, jerk and snap discontinuities so that the cycle time required to complete the process can be reduced. The trajectory design was constructed for all the six joints, using a 9 th order Bezier curve to accommodate the ten boundary conditions required to satisfy the continuity constraints for joints displacement, velocity, acceleration, jerk and snap. The scheme combines the multi-objective genetic algorithm and the multi-objective goal attainment algorithm to solve the problem of total tracking error reduction during arc welding. The use of a hybrid multi-objective algorithm shows an improved average spread, average distance, number of iteration and computational time. Also, it can be concluded from the constraints studied, that the optimal path in terms of the robots dynamic constraints can achieve the expected tracking ability in terms of the optimal joint angles, velocities, acceleration, jerk, snap and torque.

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