KCD: a Collision Detector for Path Planning in Factory Models.

Abstract

A critical operation in robot path planning is the verification for collision between the robot and the obstacles in its environment. In this contribution we present a new collision detector KCD dedicated to path planning for mechanical devices and robots in industrial-size CAD models. We describe the architecture of KCD and the way in which it is applied in the path planning tool Move3D. We report on experimental results showing its performance. 1 Introduction A collision detection algorithm takes as input a soup of possibly moving objects and determines whether or not any of these objects clash. The algorithm may return a boolean result, the minimal distance between the nearest pair of objects, all pairs of colliding objects, or an estimation of penetration in case of collision. Applications may have to feed the algorithm with a particular format or may need particular feedback. Preconditions on the representation of objects can be exploited by an algorithm (e.g. if all objects are...