A new motion planning method for robots in static workspaces is presented. This method proceeds in two phases: a learning phase and a query phase. In the learning phase, a probabilistic roadmap is constructed and stored as a graph whose nodes correspond to collision-free configurations and whose edges correspond to feasible paths between these configurations. These paths are computed using a simple and fast local planner. In the query phase, any given start and goal configurations of the robot are connected to two nodes of the roadmap; the roadmap is then searched for a path joining these two nodes. The method is general and easy to implement. It can be applied to virtually any type of holonomic robot. It requires selecting certain parameters (e.g., the duration of the learning phase) whose values depend on the scene, that is the robot and its workspace. But these values turn out to be relatively easy to choose, Increased efficiency can also be achieved by tailoring some components of the method (e.g., the local planner) to the considered robots. In this paper the method is applied to planar articulated robots with many degrees of freedom. Experimental results show that path planning can be done in a fraction of a second on a contemporary workstation (=150 MIPS), after learning for relatively short periods of time (a few dozen seconds)

This paper presents a state-space perspective on the kinodynamic planning problem, and introduces a randomized path planning technique that computes collision-free kinodynamic trajectories for high degreeof -freedom problems. By using a state space formulation, the kinodynamic planning problem is treated as a 2n-dimensional nonholonomic planning problem, derived from an n-dimensional configuration space. The state space serves the same role as the configuration space for basic path planning; however, standard randomized path planning techniques do not directly apply to planning trajectories in the state space. We have developed a randomized planning approach that is particularly tailored to kinodynamic problems in state spaces, although it also applies to standard nonholonomic and holonomic planning problems. The basis for this approach is the construction of a tree that attempts to rapidly and uniformly explore the state space, offering benefits that are similar to those obtained by ...

this paper we consider an obstacle-based prm

We introduce the notion of expansiveness to characterize a family of robot configuration spaces whose connectivity can be effectively captured by a roadmap of randomly-sampled milestones. The analysis of expansive configuration spaces has inspired us to develop a new randomized planning algorithm. This algorithm tries to sample only the portion of the configuration space that is relevant to the current query, avoiding the cost of precomputing a roadmap for the entire configuration space. Thus, it is well-suited for problems where a single query is submitted for a given environment. The algorithm has been implemented and successfully applied to complex assembly maintainability problems from the automotive industry.

We introduce the concept of a Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT) as a randomized data structure that is designed for a broad class of path planning problems. While they share many of the beneficial properties of existing randomized planning techniques, RRTs are specifically designed to handle nonholonomic constraints (including dynamics) and high degrees of freedom. An RRT is iteratively expanded by applying control inputs that drive the system slightly toward randomly-selected points, as opposed to requiring point-to-point convergence, as in the probabilistic roadmap approach. Several desirable properties and a basic implementation of RRTs are discussed. To date, we have successfully applied RRTs to holonomic, nonholonomic, and kinodynamic planning problems of up to twelve degrees of freedom.

This paper describes a new approach to probabilistic roadmap planners (PRMs). The overall theme of the algorithm, called Lazy PRM, is to minimize the number of collision checks performed during planning and hence minimize the running time of the planner. Our algorithm builds a roadmap in the configuration space, whose nodes are the user-defined initial and goal configurations and a number of randomly generated nodes. Neighboring nodes are connected by edges representing paths between the nodes. In contrast with PRMs, our planner initially assumes that all nodes and edges in the roadmap are collision-free, and searches the roadmap at hand for a shortest path between the initial and the goal node. The nodes and edges along the path are then checked for collision. If a collision with the obstacles occurs, the corresponding nodes and edges are removed from the roadmap. Our planner either finds a new shortest path, or first updates the roadmap with new nodes and edges, and then searches for a shortest path. The above process is repeated until a collision-free path is returned.

We present a randomized motion planner for robots that must avoid moving obstacles and achieve a specified goal under kinematic and dynamic constraints. The planner samples the robot's statetime space by picking control inputs at random and integrating the equations of motion. The result is a roadmap of sampled statetime points, called milestones, connected by short admissible trajectories. The planner does not precompute the roadmap as traditional probabilistic roadmap planners do; instead, for each planning query, it generates a new roadmap to find a trajectory between an initial and a goal statetime point. We prove in this paper that the probability that the planner fails to find such a trajectory when one exists quickly goes to 0, as the number of milestones grows. The planner has been implemented and tested successfully in both simulated and real environments. In the latter case, a vision module estimates obstacle motions just before planning starts; the planner is then allocated a small, fixed amount of time to compute a trajectory. If a change in the obstacle motion is detected while the robot executes the planned trajectory, the planner recomputes a trajectory on the fly. 1

... This paper provides foundations for understanding the effect of passages on the connectedness of probabilistic roadmaps. It also proposes a new random sampling scheme for finding such passages. An initial roadmap is built in a "dilated" free space allowing some penetration distance of the robot into the obstacles. This roadmap is then modified by resampling around the links that do not lie in the true free space. Experiments show that this strategy allows relatively small roadmaps to reliably capture the free space connectivity

We apply manipulation planning to computer animation. A new path planner is presented that automatically computes the collision-free trajectories for several cooperating arms to manipulate a movable object between two configurations. This implemented planner is capable of dealing with complicated tasks where regrasping is involved. In addition, we present a new inverse kinematics algorithm for the human arms. This algorithm is utilized by the planner for the generation of realistic human arm motions as they manipulate objects. We view our system as a tool for facilitating the production of animation.

This paper presents a new randomized roadmap method for motion planning for many dof robots that can be used to obtain high quality roadmaps even when C-space is crowded. The main novelty in our approach is that roadmap candidate points are chosen on C-obstacle surfaces. As a consequence, the roadmap is likely to contain difficult paths, such as those traversing long, narrow passages in C-space. The approach can be used for both collision-free path planning and for manipulation planning of contact tasks. Experimental results with a planar articulated 6 dof robot show that, after preprocessing, difficult path planning operations can often be carried out in less than a second. 1 Introduction Automatic motion planning has application in many areas such as robotics, virtual reality systems, and computeraided design. Although many different motion planning methods have been proposed, most are not used in practice since they are computationally infeasible except for some restricted cases, e...