An Integrated Method for Planning Smooth Collision-Free Trajectories for Robot Arms

Abstract

A method for planning motions of robot arms is presented which considers not only the collision-avoidance but also robot's dynamic aspects. Based on the concept of configuration space, robot motions are planned at the topological and geometric level consecutively. At the topological level, the boundaries of the Configurationspace obstacles (C-obstacles) are computed and approximately represented while the complement of the Cobstacles, i.e. the free-space is divided into Empty Blocks {EBs). Linking all the connected EBs, we get a net called characteristic net. Given the initial and goal configuration of the robot, routes consisting of EBs (EB-routes) are searched in the characteristic net. At the geometric level, smooth trajectories are generated along EB-routes using Bsplines while avoiding collisions with local C-obstacles.