Improving and Benchmarking Motion Planning for a Mobile Manipulator Operating in Unstructured Environments

This paper presents the use, adaptation and benchmarking of motion planning tools that will be integrated with the KUKA KMR iiwa mobile robot. The motion planning tools are integrated in the robotic agent presented in [1]. The adaptation consists on algorithms developed to increase the robustness and the efficiency to solve the motion planning problems. These algorithms combine existing motion planners with a trajectory filter developed in this work. Finally, the benchmarking of different motion planners is presented. Three motion planning tasks with a growing level of complexity are taken in consideration for the tests in a simulation environment. The motion planners that provided the best results were RRTConnect for the two less complex tasks and PRM* for the most difficult task.