SummaryThis paper presents research work which crosses the divide between “Path Planning” and “Trajectory Generation & Tracking”. These subjects have tended to develop along two parallel lines, in isolation from each other. The work uses the Lagrange formulation for the three major joints of an industrial manipulator. Simple planning rules are developed from this formulation. The rules are used to select new paths for a manipulator rather than to improve preplanned trajectories. The method has been applied to pick and place tasks requiring gross motions of the manipulator and the results are presented. It is shown that using this method, pre-planned manipulator paths can be modified to improve the gross motions associated with the pick and place task.