Abstract: A method and apparatus for recycling plastic waste to produce a wood substitute material for use in manufacture of garden products. A mixture of one or more types of plastic materials is extruded in a partially plasticised condition so as to allow gases formed by the extrusion process to escape from the surface of the extrusion to create a simulated wood. Holes (9) formed in the surface of the extruded plastic material by escaping gases are elongated by passage of the extrusion through a finishing die (7) downstream of the extruder (5) to form a rough textured surface similar to sawn wood and the plastic material is set to retain the shape and configuration of the textured surface by cooling in a water bath (8) downstream of the finishing die (7).

Abstract: An end effector move is executed by transforming the end effector position and orientation into joint coordinates at a large number of points on the end effector trajectory. On-line joint trajectories are determined in real time by looking ahead a few points on the end effector trajectory and generating points along the different joint trajectories. The current point and the look-ahead points are referred to as a block. An initial estimate of the slope at the block end points is made and then improved by overlapping the next block with the current block. The coefficients of the polynomials converting the points in the joint trajectories are interpolated to provide position commands to a servo control associated with the robot joint to control robot joint motion.