Path Planner With Vision Capability

In this paper we are going to describe an ongoing research project intended to integrate a full vision system in a flexible robot programming environment. The use of the vision system sensors, allows the robot to derive a description of the work cell. This description is used for the collision avoidance problem of robot manipulators. The work cell in assembly context can include moving objects. Without any previous knowledge of the work space, the vision system thus immediately determines the work cell map in its entirely. Successively this map is used as input for the path planner process to find the collision-free path. During the assembly robot operation, the vision system is activated to reflect any changes in the robot environment. In this way the path planner works recursively, updating the collision free path until the goal is reached.