Robot programming using augmented reality: An interactive method for planning collision-free paths

Current robot programming approaches lack the intuitiveness required for quick and simple applications. As new robotic applications are being identified, there is a greater need to be able to programme robots safely and quickly. This paper discusses the use of an augmented reality (AR) environment for facilitating intuitive robot programming, and presents a novel methodology for planning collision-free paths for an n-d.o.f. (degree-of-freedom) manipulator in a 3D AR environment. The methodology is interactive because the human is involved in defining the free space or collision-free volume (CFV), and selecting the start and goal configurations. The methodology uses a heuristic beam search algorithm to generate the paths. A number of possible scenarios are discussed.     

Neuro-fuzzy and model-based motion control for mobile manipulator among dynamic obstacles

This paper focuses on autonomous motion control of a nonholonomic platform with a robotic arm, which is called mobile manipulator. It serves in transportation of loads in imperfectly known industrial environments with unknown dynamic obstacles. A union of both procedures is used to solve the general problems of collision-free motion. The problem of collision-free motion for mobile manipulators has been approached from two directions, Planning and Reactive Control. The dynamic path planning can be used to solve the problem of locomotion of mobile platform, and reactive approaches can be employed to solve the motion planning of the arm. The execution can generate the commands for the servo-systems of the robot so as to follow a given nominal trajectory while reacting in real-time to unexpected events. The execution can be designed as an Adaptive Fuzzy Neural Controller. In real world systems, sensor-based motion control becomes essential to deal with model uncertainties and unexpected obstacles.     

Haptic-aided robot path planning based on virtual tele-operation

The motivation of this work arises from the fact that it is very difficult for an automatic path planning method, e.g. probabilistic roadmap (PRM) to generate an optimized path, and sometimes it even fails for an automatic method to find a collision-free path, due to failure of discovering critical robot configurations. However, these critical configurations might be plain to an operator. Therefore, the advantages of human's intuition are exploited to facilitate the robot path planning process in this research. The objective of this paper is to combine the advantages of human's intuition or experiences and the huge computational power of computers to develop a semi-automatic robot path planner that can generate an user-preferred collision-free robot path. In the path planning process, the user interaction is made easy by the development of a haptically controlled virtual robot. By virtual tele-robot manipulation, a user can define or modify critical robot configurations based on which collision-free robot path can be automatically generated.     

Collision-free motion planning of dual-arm reconfigurable robots

Dual-arm reconfigurable robot is a new type of robot. It can adapt to different tasks by changing its different end-effector modules which have standard connectors. Especially, in fast and flexible assembly, it is very important to research the collision-free planning of dual-arm reconfigurable robots. It is to find a continuous, collision-free path in an environment containing obstacles. A new approach to the real-time collision-free motion planning of dual-arm reconfigurable robots is used in the paper. This method is based on configuration space (C-Space). The method of configuration space and the concepts reachable manifold and contact manifold are successfully applied to the collision-free motion planning of dual-arm robot. The complexity of dual-arm robots’ collision-free planning will reduce to a search in a dispersed C-Space. With this algorithm, a real-time optimum path is found. And when the start point and the end point of the dual-arm robot are specified, the algorithm will successfully get the collision-free path real time. A verification of this algorithm is made in the dual-arm horizontal articulated robot SCARATES, and the simulation and experiment ascertain that the algorithm is feasible and effective.     

Mobile robot with a self-positioning system

This paper describes a general method using configuration space for planning a collision-free path of a manipulator with 6 degrees of freedom (DOF). The basic approach taken in this method is to restrict the free space concerning path planning and to avoid executing unnecessary collision detections, based on the idea that a collision-free path can be planned using only partial information of the configuration space. The configuration space is equally quantized into cells, and the cells concerning path planning are efficiently enumerated based on a heuristic graph search algorithm. A heuristic function which characterizes the search strategy can be defined to give priority to the gross motion using the first few joints. A bi-directional search strategy is also introduced to improve efficiency. The memory is allocated only to the portion of the configuration space concerning path planning, and the data of the free space defined in the 6-dimensional configuration space can be efficiently stored. This algorithm of free space enumeration is independent of the kinematic characteristics of the manipulator. Therefore, this method is generally applicable to any type of manipulator. It has actually been implemented and has been applied to a 6-DOF articulated manipulator.     

Autonomous mobile robot dynamic motion planning using hybrid fuzzy potential field

A new fuzzy-based potential field method is presented in this paper for autonomous mobile robot motion planning with dynamic environments including static or moving target and obstacles. Two fuzzy Mamdani and TSK models have been used to develop the total attractive and repulsive forces acting on the mobile robot. The attractive and repulsive forces were estimated using four inputs representing the relative position and velocity between the target and the robot in the x and y directions, in one hand, and between the obstacle and the robot, on the other hand. The proposed fuzzy potential field motion planning was investigated based on several conducted MATLAB simulation scenarios for robot motion planning within realistic dynamic environments. As it was noticed from these simulations that the proposed approach was able to provide the robot with collision-free path to softly land on the moving target and solve the local minimum problem within any stationary or dynamic environment compared to other potential field-based approaches.     

Collision avoidance for Robot manipulators: Application to Catia/IBM 7565 interface

A collision avoidance algorithm has been developed to augment the capability of an automatic (off-line) robot path planning (programming) tool. The use of off-line programming tools for robot task programming is becoming increasingly important, but the advantages to be gained by off-line programming may be lost if collision-free path planning capabilities are not included. This article addressed the problem of collision-free path planning in the context of a gantry type robot. The collision avoidance algorithm described here uses the <heuristic approach> to collision-free path planning. The manipulator and obstacles are modeled as spheres to simplify tests for collision. An important feature of this algorithm is that it permits the manipulation of objects in the robot's environment. When compared against an algorithm from the literature, given a lightly cluttered environment modelled by spheres, the new algorithm finds a collision-free path much faster. This new algorithm has been implemented as part of the CATIA/IBM 7565 interface which forms an automatic off-line programming system for the IBM 7565 robot. It has also been implemented as a supervisory collision filter to allow collision-free control of the robot from the operator's console. In both cases the algorithm has been demonstrated to provide efficient and effective collision avoidance for the IBM 7565 robot.     

考虑动力学模型的非完整移动机器人运动规划

针对非完整移动机器人,在运动学和动力学约束条件下提出了一种运动规划方法.在工作环境已知情况下,根据移动机器人的动力学模型和无打滑非完整运动约束条件,采用立方螺线对规划的路径光滑化,从而使得移动机器人易于跟踪所规划的路径,同时考虑了移动机器人速度的限制.最后采用Matlab对该算法进行了数值仿真,结果表明该方法是有效的.     

A search algorithm for motion planning with six degrees of freedom

The motion planning problem is of central importance to the fields of robotics, spatial planning, and automated design. In robotics we are interested in the automatic synthesis of robot motions, given high-level specifications of tasks and geometric models of the robot and obstacles. The “Movers'” problem is to find a continuous, collision-free path for a moving object through an environment containing obstacles. We present an implemented algorithm for the classical formulation of the three-dimensional Movers' problem: Given an arbitrary rigid polyhedral moving object P with three translational and three rotational degrees of freedom, find a continuous, collision-free path taking P from some initial configuration to a desired goal configuration.This paper describes an implementation of a complete algorithm (at a given resolution) for the full six degree of freedom Movers' problem. The algorithm transforms the six degree of freedom planning problem into a point navigation problem in a six-dimensional configuration space (called C-space). The C-space obstacles, which characterize the physically unachievable configurations, are directly represented by six-dimensional manifolds whose boundaries are five-dimensional C-surfaces. By characterizing these surfaces and their intersections, collision-free paths may be found by the closure of three operators which (i) slide along five-dimensional level C-surfaces parallel to C-space obstacles; (ii) slide along one- to four-dimensional intersections of level C-surfaces; and (iii) jump between six-dimensional obstacles. These operators are employed by a best-first search algorithm in C-space. We will discuss theoretical properties of the algorithm, including completeness (at a resolution). This paper describes the heuristic search, with particular emphasis on the heuristic strategies that evaluate local geometric information. At the heart of this paper lie the design and implementation of these strategies for planning paths along level C-surfaces and their intersection manifolds, and for reasoning about motions with three degrees of rotational freedom. The problems of controlling the interaction of these strategies, and of integrating diverse local experts for geometric reasoning provide an interesting application of search to a difficult domain with significant practical implications. The representations and algorithms we develop impact many geometric planning problems, and extend to Cartesian manipulators with six degrees of freedom.     

Study on the Configuration Space Based Algorithmic Path Planning of Industrial Robots in an Unstructured Congested Three-Dimensional Space: An Approach Using Visibility Map

Obstacle avoidance and subsequently collision-free path planning is a potential field of robotics research, specially in the perspective of today's industrial scenario. In this paper, the celebrated method, namely, Visibility Map is being used to generate feasible collision-free near-optimal safe path(s) for a three- dimensional congested robot workspace using heuristic algorithms. The final path is obtainable in terms of joint configurations, by considering the Configuration Space of the task-space. The developed algorithms have been verified by considering typical 2D workspaces at the onset, cluttered with different obstacles (convex and/or concave) with regular geometries and later on, with the real spatial manifold. The outcome of these algorithms has been found instrumental in programming an industrial robot in order to perform a series of task in the shop-floor. A case-study reveals the effectiveness of the heuristics involved in the developed algorithms, by virtue of the successful application in an unstructured industrial environment to carry out robotized material handling operation in real-time.     

融合环境信息和运动约束的改进A*算法研究

标准A*算法存在着无法考虑移动机器人运动特性及处理后的路径不利于移动机器人运动等问题。针对这一问题提出了一种新改进A*算法,通过环境信息引入障碍物权重系数来改进算法的启发函数并进行全局路径规划;优化搜索节点的选取方式和设定障碍物与路径之间的安全距离;基于对移动机器人的运动特性的考虑优化其路径,并在不同环境地图中与其他算法进行仿真实验对比分析。相关实验表明：基于新改进A*算法规划的路径始终与障碍物保持一定的安全距离;改进A*算法在时间上相比标准A*算法平均减少了80%,路径长度平均减少了2%,路径转角平均降低了82%。改进后算法相比其他算法在时间、搜索节点以及平滑度上有很大的改进,融合机器人环境信息和运动特性的规划路径算法可为移动机器人的路径规划提供一种新的方法。     

Planning of collision-free paths for a reconfigurable dual manipulator equipped mobile robot

In this paper, we study the problem of finding a collision-free path for a mobile robot which possesses manipulators. The task of the robot is to carry a polygonal object from a starting point to a destination point in a possibly culttered environment. In most of the existing research on robot path planning, a mobile robot is approximated by a fixed shape, i.e., a circle or a polygon. In our task planner, the robot is allowed to change configurations for avoiding collision. This path planner operates using two algorithms: the collision-free feasible configuration finding algorithm and the collision-free path finding algorithm. The collision-free feasible configuration finding algorithm finds all collision-free feasible configurations for the robot when the position of the carried object is given. The collision-free path finding algorithm generates some candidate paths first and then uses a graph search method to find a collision-free path from all the collision-free feasible configurations along the candidate paths. The proposed algorithms can deal with a cluttered environment and is guaranteed to find a solution if one exists.     

基于混合策略的轮式机器入路径规划方法

快速扩展随机树方法（R RT）是解决具有非完整性约束的轮式机器人路径规划问题的一种有效途径。R RT能够在规划过程中引入机器人动力学约束,但是当环境中存在大量障碍物时,R RT算法的路径搜索效率将会降低。另一方面,R RT算法不具有最优性,限制了其在轮式机器人路径规划中的应用。针对经典R RT算法的不足,提出一种混合的路径规划策略,首先通过路径导引点扩展多树R RT结构,利用多树R RT的局部探索与合并特性快速寻找可通行的区域范围,利用启发式搜索算法在可通行区域内快速寻找动力学可行的机器人运动轨迹。仿真与实车实验表明,该方法能够快速有效地解决复杂障碍物环境下的机器人路径规划问题。     

Stepping over obstacles with humanoid robots

The wide potential applications of humanoid robots require that the robots can walk in complex environments and overcome various obstacles. To this end, we address the problem of humanoid robots stepping over obstacles in this paper. We focus on two aspects, which are feasibility analysis and motion planning. The former determines whether a robot can step over a given obstacle, and the latter discusses how to step over, if feasible, by planning appropriate motions for the robot. We systematically examine both of these aspects. In the feasibility analysis, using an optimization technique, we cast the problem into global optimization models with nonlinear constraints, including collision-free and balance constraints. The solutions to the optimization models yield answers to the possibility of stepping over obstacles under some assumptions. The presented approach for feasibility provides not only a priori knowledge and a database to implement stepping over obstacles, but also a tool to evaluate and compare the mobility of humanoid robots. In motion planning, we present an algorithm to generate suitable trajectories of the feet and the waist of the robot using heuristic methodology, based on the results of the feasibility analysis. We decompose the body motion of the robot into two parts, corresponding to the lower body and upper body of the robot, to meet the collision-free and balance constraints. This novel planning method is adaptive to obstacle sizes, and is, hence, oriented to autonomous stepping over by humanoid robots guided by vision or other range finders. Its effectiveness is verified by simulations and experiments on our humanoid platform HRP-2.     

The complexity of the free space for motion planning amidst fat obstacles

The complexity of motion planning algorithms highly depends on the complexity of the robot's free space, i.e., the set of all collision-free placements of the robot. Theoretically, the complexity of the free space can be very high, resulting in bad worst-case time bounds for motion planning algorithms. In practice, the complexity of the free space tends to be much smaller than the worst-case complexity. Motion planning algorithms with a running time that is determined by the complexity of the free space therefore become feasible in practical situations. We show that, under some realistic assumptions, the complexity of the free space of a robot with any fixed number of degrees of freedom moving around in ad-dimensional Euclidean workspace with fat obstacles is linear in the number of obstacles. The complexity results lead to highly efficient algorithms for motion planning amidst fat obstacles.Research is supported by the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and partially supported by the ESPRIT III BRA Project 6546 (PROMotion).     

Real-time path planning of autonomous robots in a two-dimensional unknown dynamic navigation environment

This paper deals with the real-time path planning of an autonomous mobile robot in two-dimensional, unknown, dynamic multiple robot navigation space. In particular, a collision-free navigation path planning strategy is presented in real time by using a heuristichuman like approach. The heuristic scheme used here is based on thetrial and error methodology with the attempt to minimize the cost of the navigation efforts, when time plays a significant role. Past built-up navigation experience and current extracted information from the surrounding environment are used for the detection of other moving objects (robots) in the same navigation environment. Moreover, the determination of asecure navigation path is supported by a set of generic traffic priority rules followed by the autonomous robots moving in the same environment. Simulated results for two moving objects in the same navigation space are also presented.     

Collision-free and smooth joint motion planning for six-axis industrial robots by redundancy optimization

Planning collision-free and smooth joint motion is crucial in robotic applications, such as welding, milling, and laser cutting. Kinematic redundancy exists when a six-axis industrial robot performs five-dimensional tasks, and there are infinite joint configurations for a six-axis industrial robot to realize a cutter location data of the tool path. The robot joint motion can be optimized by taking advantage of the kinematic redundancy, and the collision-free joint motion with minimum joint movement is determined as the optimal. However, most existing redundancy optimization methods do not fully exploit the redundancy of the six-axis industrial robots when they conduct five-dimensional tasks. In this paper, we present an optimization method to solve the problem of inverse kinematics for a six-axis industrial robot to synthesize the joint motion that follows a given tool path, while achieving smoothness and collision-free manipulation. B-spline is applied for the joint configuration interpolation, and the sum of the squares of the first, second, and third derivatives of the B-spline curves are adopted as the smoothness indicators. Besides, the oriented bounding boxes are adopted to simplify the shape of the robot joints, robot links, spindle unit, and fixtures to facilitate collision detections. Dijkstra's shortest path technique and Differential Evolution algorithm are combined to find the optimal joint motion efficiently and avoid getting into a local optimal solution. The proposed algorithm is validated by simulations on two six-axis industrial robots conducting five-axis flank milling tasks respectively.     

Dynamic path planning for a planar articulated robot arm moving amidst unknown obstacles

This work is concerned with planning collision-free paths for a robot arm moving in an environment filled with unknown obstacles, where any point of the robot body is subject to collision. To compensate for the uncertainty, the system is provided with sensory feedback information about its immediate surroundings. In such a setting, which presents significant practical and theoretical interest, human intuition is of little help, and designing algorithms with proven convergence thus becomes an important task. We show that, given the target position, local feedback information is sufficient to guarantee reaching a global objective (the target position) and present a nonheuristic algorithm which generates reasonable—if, in general, not optimal—collision-free paths. In this approach, the path is being planned continuously (dynamically), based on the arm's current position and on the sensory feedback. Here, a case of a planar arm with two revolute joints is studied. No constraints on the shape of the robot links or the obstacles are imposed. The general idea is to reduce the problem of motion planning to an analysis of simple closed curves on the surface of an appropriate two-dimensional manifold.     

基于改进蚁群算法的移动机器人平滑路径规划

针对移动机器人提出了基于改进蚁群算法的平滑路径规划方法。为了克服蚁群算 法解决路径规划问题时存在的收敛速度慢的缺点,对启发因子的矩阵初始值及更新方式进行了 改进,启发因子改进后的结果与之前相比,平均路径长度减少了 17.6%,平均收敛代数减少了 93.1%;对于栅格环境下存在障碍物时机器人累计转弯角度大的问题,提出了控制点转移策略, 在上一步改进的基础上,通过对控制路径走向的栅格中心点向栅格角顶点的转移,实现了路径 规划的平滑改进。路径规划仿真结果表明,与平滑改进前相比,平滑改进后机器人的平均路径 长度减少了 4.28%,累计转弯角度减少了 52.58%。     

Planning 3-D Collision-Free Dynamic Robotic Motion Through Iterative Reshaping

We propose a general and practical planning framework for generating 3-D collision-free motions that take complex robot dynamics into account. The framework consists of two stages that are applied iteratively. In the first stage, a collision-free path is obtained through efficient geometric and kinematic sampling-based motion planning. In the second stage, the path is transformed into dynamically executable robot trajectories by dedicated dynamic motion generators. In the proposed iterative method, those dynamic trajectories are sent back again to the first stage to check for collisions. Depending on the application, temporal or spatial reshaping methods are used to treat detected collisions. Temporal reshaping adjusts the velocity, whereas spatial reshaping deforms the path itself. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method through examples of a space manipulator with highly nonlinear dynamics and a humanoid robot executing dynamic manipulation and locomotion at the same time.