Collision-Free Motion Planning for Multiple Manipulator System Using a Potential Function

It is necessary to consider the problem of collisions when multiple manipulators work in a common space. This paper proposes a method for collision-free motion planning of a multiple manipulator system. In this method, geometrical constraints are represented by constraint potential functions using the idea of “constrained space”. An algorithm for motion planning of multi-plane-manipulators is presented using the constraint potential functions and a goal potential function. Computer simulations show that the proposed method is especially effective when the system has many manipulators and many joint degrees of freedom in a common work space.