A contribution to collision-free trajectory planning for handling systems in varying environments

In highly flexible and complex handling systems the risk of collision of moving machine components is continuously increasing. When, for example, several robots share the same workspace and the environment in the workspace is changing due to the operation, the robot trajectories can no longer be planned in advance without the risk of collision. The objective of this paper is the collision-free motion planning of handling system manipulators from the start to the end position within a changing environment. For this purpose, the trajectories on the control system have to be planned during the operating time most efficiently depending on the current state of a varying environment. This paper describes a new approach for trajectory planning based on curve shortening flows combined with potential fields. The functional capability of the method will be demonstrated initially on a simple robot kinematics with two degrees of freedom.