A novel collision detection method based on enclosed ellipsoid

Abstract

The paper introduces an efficient collision detection method for convex polyhedra in a three-dimensional workspace. In cooperation with the enclosing and the enclosed ellipsoids of convex polyhedra, potential collisions can be detected more accurate than those methods using only bounding ellipsoids for object representation, and more efficient than the polyhedral methods. An approach for computing the enclosed ellipsoid of a convex polyhedron by compressing, stretching and scaling operations on its best-fit enclosing ellipsoid is also introduced in this content. Graphical simulation of two robot manipulators moving in a share workspace was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for collision detection.