Collision-free path planning for an articulated robot

다관절 로보트를 위한 충돌 회피 경로 계획

The purpose of this paper is to develop a method of Collision-Free Path Planning (CFPP) for an articulated robot. First, the configuration of the robot is formed by a set of robot joint angles derived fromm robot inverse kinematics. The joint space that is made of the joint angle set, forms a Configuration space (Cspace). Obstacles in the robot workcell are also transformed and mapped into the Cspace, which makes Cobstacles in the Cspace. (The Cobstacles represented in the Cspace is actually the configurations of the robot causing collision.) Secondly, a connected graph, a kind of roadmap, is constructed from the free configurations in the 3 dimensional Cspace, where the configurations are randomly sampled form the free Cspace. Thirdly, robot paths are optimally in order to minimize of the sum of joint angle movements. A path searching algorithm based on A is employed in determining the paths. Finally, the whole procedures for the CFPP method are illustrated with a 3 axis articulated robot. The main characteristics of the method are; 1) it deals with CFPP for an articulated robot in a 3-dimensional workcell, 2) it guarantees finding a collision free path, if such a path exists, 3) it provides distance optimization in terms of joint angle movements. The whole procedures are implemented by C on an IBM compatible 486 PC. GL (Graphic Library) on an IRIS CAD workstation is utilized to produce fine graphic outputs.