Robotic applications, such as automatic fish cutting, require online trajectory planning because the material properties of the object, such as the bone or flesh conditions, are not known in advance. Different trajectories are required when the material properties vary. An effective online trajectory-planning algorithm is proposed using quaternions to determine the position and orientation of a robot manipulator with a spherical wrist. Quaternions are free of representation singularities and permit computationally efficient orientation interpolations. To prevent singular configurations, the exact locations of the kinematic singularities of the PUMA 560 manipulator are derived and geometrically illustrated when a forearm offset exists and the third link length is not zero.