Collision detection between the wrists of two robot arms in a common workspace

Detecting collisions for planning collision-free motion of the wrists of two robot arms in a common workspace is discussed in this paper. A collision-free motion can be obtained by detecting collisions along the preplanned trajectories using a sphere model for the wrist of each robot and then modifying the paths and/or trajectories of one or both robots to avoid the collision. In this paper, a collision detection algorithm is described and its role in collision avoidance is discussed. Collision detection is based on the premise that (1) the wrists of robots move monotonically on their preplanned straight line trajectories and (2) collisions never occur between the two wrists at the beginning points or end points.Research supported by the NASA-Langley Research Center under Grants #NAG-1-632 and #NAG-1-772 and the AT&T Foundation.