Geometrical approach for determining the throwing destination of an automatic throwing robot

Abstract

To accomplish a task automatically without any human intervention, a robot's first step is to collect necessary information from the surroundings as input. Depending on the application, in some cases a robot may need to perform throwing action automatically. For an accurate throw, an unerring destination detection should be executed. In this paper, a method for determining the throwing destination of a robot is presented. Regarded that the robot works in an open terrain and is designed to consider any physical object found within a certain range around it as a potential target. A relative geometrical analysis between throwing arm's rotational axis position, sensor position and sensor data gave certain equations in different cases to directly determine the polar coordinates of the throwing location relative to the arm. This gives the flexibility of placing the sensor in any suitable place. To substantiate the obtained equations, a system for determining the throwing position was developed using the derived method with same preconditions. Satisfactory performance of the system with good experimental results was found, which upholds the validity of the derived method.