Collision-free motion planning of dual-arm reconfigurable robots

Dual-arm reconfigurable robot is a new type of robot. It can adapt to different tasks by changing its different enc.-effector modules which have standard connectors. Especially, in fast and flexible assembly, it is very important to research the collision-free planning of dual-arm reconfigurable robots. It is to find a continuous, collision-free path in an environment containing obstacles. A new approach to the real-time collision-free motion planning of dual-arm reconfigurable robots is used in the paper. This method is based on configuration space (C-Space). The method of configuration space and the concepts reachable manifold and contact manifold are successfully applied to the collision-free motion planning of dual-arm robot. The complexity of dual-arm robots' collision-free planning will reduce to a search in a dispersed C-Space. With this algorithm, a real-time optimum path is found. And when the start point and the end point of the dual-arm robot are specified, the algorithm will successfully get the collision-free path real time. A verification of this algorithm is made in the dual-arm horizontal articulated robot SCARATES, and the simulation and experiment ascertain that the algorithm is feasible and effective. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.