Task constrained motion planning in robot joint space

• Published in: 2007 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems pp. 3074 - 3081
• Main Author: Stilman, M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English; Japanese
• Published: IEEE 01.10.2007
• Subjects: Intelligent robots; Motion planning; Orbital robotics; Path planning; Redundancy; Robot kinematics; Sampling methods; Space exploration; USA Councils
• ISBN: 9781424409112; 142440911X
• ISSN: 2153-0858
• DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2007.4399305

We explore global randomized joint space path planning for articulated robots that are subject to task space constraints. This paper describes a representation of constrained motion for joint space planners and develops two simple and efficient methods for constrained sampling of joint configurations: Tangent Space Sampling (TS) and First-Order Retraction (FR). Constrained joint space planning is important for many real world problems involving redundant manipulators. On the one hand, tasks are designated in work space coordinates: rotating doors about fixed axes, sliding drawers along fixed trajectories or holding objects level during transport. On the other, joint space planning gives alternative paths that use redundant degrees of freedom to avoid obstacles or satisfy additional goals while performing a task. In simulation, we demonstrate that our methods are faster and significantly more invariant to problem/algorithm parameters than existing techniques.