Waypoint

A waypoint is an intermediate configuration (joint angles or Cartesian pose) that a robot's trajectory must pass through on the way from start to goal. Waypoints allow programmers and planners to guide the robot's path through specific poses — for example, to avoid an obstacle, approach an object from a safe direction, or sequence through a multi-step assembly procedure. In robot learning, high-level policies sometimes output waypoints that a lower-level motion planner interpolates into smooth joint trajectories, combining the generalization benefits of learned policies with the safety guarantees of classical planning.