Obstacle Avoidance of Robotic Arm in Path Planning Based on RRT Algorithm

Abstract

This paper delves into the obstacle avoidance issue of robotic arms in dynamic environments. In modern industry, robotic arms are applied widely and used to improve efficiency. However, during the application, there are numerous issues that robotic arms expose. Aiming at addressing several challenges of robotic arm in the industrial scenario, it is urgent to explore an effective algorithm for obstacle avoidance. The paper introduces and discusses the RRT algorithm and the optimized RRT smooth algorithm. Through the simulation, several obstacles such as cube, sphere and the combination of both of them are introduced in the simulation space to verify the effectiveness and efficiency of the RRT smooth algorithm. The graphs from the simulation of MATLAB demonstrates that the performance of RRT smooth is better than RRT algorithm to some extent and there are some visible results to be compared such as the smoothness and the efficiency. Specifically, the RRT smooth algorithm not only decrease the average path length and processing time, but also decrease the maximum velocity and acceleration as well as the average acceleration, while ensuring the high average velocity. The results demonstrate that the RRT smooth algorithm effectively optimize the motion performance of the robotic arm and is helpful for extending the lifespan of the robotic arm by reducing the vibration during the movement. Although RRT smooth is better, there still exists some defects in the algorithm such as blindness and randomness and the generated path is not the best.