A general method for accessibility analysis

Abstract

This paper presents a general method for the accessibility analysis of points in 3D space by straight lines such as light rays, measurement probes and welding rods. This method can be applied to any type of solid or surface and is not limited by continuity or derivability constraints and may be implemented on any commercial solid modeler with an exact representation of spheres. It is based on the intersection of concentric spherical shells (ICSS) centred at the analyzed point. The exact accessibility cones can be generated easily as a limit case of the ICSS. This method has been used for the accessibility analysis of measurement points by coordinates measuring machines and has potential applications in fields such as machining and robotics.