Two artificial neural network systems are considered in a hierarchical fashion to plan the trajectory and control of a robotic arm. At the higher level of the hierarchy the neural system consists of four networks: a restricted Coulomb energy network to delineate the robot arm workspace; two standard backpropagation (BP) networks for coordinates transformation; and a fourth network which also uses BP and participates in the trajectory planning by cooperating with other knowledge sources. The control emulation process which is developed using a second neural system at a lower hierarchical level provides the correct sequence of control actions. An example is presented to illustrate the capabilities of the developed architectures
