Using An Efficient Collision Detector In The Solution Of The Find-Path Problem Of Industrial Robots

In this paper an efficient approach to collision detection is proposed. Its incorporation in two approaches for the solution of the find-path problem is also presented. Collision detector is based on representing objects by a hierarchy of bounding spheres. Features of the collision detector are that computation time depends on the proximity of the objects and that the method concentrates its efforts on the parts of objects most likely to have geometric interference as determined by collision information. The use of this representation for collision detection in two approaches for the solution of the find-path problem, namely a generate and test approach and a free space representation based approach, are presented. The paper is organized as follows. First, a review of the literature is given. Second, details of the collision detector and its incorporation in a solution for the find-path problem are presented. Third, the implementation of this approach on a LISP machine and the preliminary performance tests performed using a PUMA 560 robot are discussed. Finally, conclusions and potential extensions are outlined.