Adaptive path planning and obstacle avoidance for a robot with a large degree of redundancy

Abstract

A new algorithm for path planning and obstacle avoidance for redundant planar robots is proposed. The task of path planning is formulated as a sequence of nonlinear programming problems. For each problem, the objective is to minimize the distance between the current location of the end-effector and a desired location. Two penalties are added to each objective function to ensure that the robot is not colliding with any obstacle and that its links are not crossed over. The effects of mechanical stops and limits for maximum joint movements are also incorporated as inequality constraints. The algorithm uses an adaptive scheme to activate the fewest number of the outboardmost joints, and none of the inboard ones if possible, to reach a desired location. The algorithm is especially useful when the number of joints is large. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.