A real-time approach to the coordination of multiple manipulators

Abstract

Collision avoidance is mission or safety critical for most robot applications. The system described here provides for real-time or near real-time monitoring of manipulator motion to detect potential collisions and prevent them. For each link in the manipulator the volume swept out by its commanded motion is reserved. Using volume approximations that are easy to compute with, these reserved volumes are pairwise compared for overlap and, therefore, potential collision. Performance estimates indicate that such a space reservation system should be fast enough to act as a safety monitor and to coordinate multiple manipulator systems without advance knowledge of the manipulator trajectories. The system is thus suitable for both teleoperation and autonomous systems. Performance trade-offs and a prototype that is being implemented are discussed.