Executing motion plans for robots with many degrees of freedom in dynamic environments

Abstract

In many robotic applications motions must be executed robustly in dynamic and partially unknown environments. Despite this requirement most motion planning algorithms assume the environment to be known and changes to be predictable. The planning problem in dynamic environments can be decomposed into a planning and an execution phase. In this paper we describe a new framework for the execution of motion plans for robots with many degrees of freedom in dynamic environments. An initial valid trajectory is incrementally modified according to changes in the environment to maintain a collision free path. This framework achieves real-time performance for robots with many degrees of freedom. It is particularly well suited for redundant systems and mobile manipulation, since it allows motion specification of a subset of the degrees of freedom of the robot, greatly simplifying the task of robot programming.