Robot Motion Planning

✍ Scribed by Jean-Claude Latombe (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 667
• Series: The Springer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science 124
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

One of the ultimate goals in Robotics is to create autonomous robots. Such robots will accept high-level descriptions of tasks and will execute them without further human intervention. The input descriptions will specify what the user wants done rather than how to do it. The robots will be any kind of versatile mechanical device equipped with actuators and sensors under the control of a computing system. Making progress toward autonomous robots is of major practical inter­ est in a wide variety of application domains including manufacturing, construction, waste management, space exploration, undersea work, as­ sistance for the disabled, and medical surgery. It is also of great technical interest, especially for Computer Science, because it raises challenging and rich computational issues from which new concepts of broad useful­ ness are likely to emerge. Developing the technologies necessary for autonomous robots is a formidable undertaking with deep interweaved ramifications in auto­ mated reasoning, perception and control. It raises many important prob­ lems. One of them - motion planning - is the central theme of this book. It can be loosely stated as follows: How can a robot decide what motions to perform in order to achieve goal arrangements of physical objects? This capability is eminently necessary since, by definition, a robot accomplishes tasks by moving in the real world. The minimum one would expect from an autonomous robot is the ability to plan its x Preface own motions.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xix
Introduction and Overview....Pages 1-57
Configuration Space of a Rigid Object....Pages 58-104
Obstacles in Configuration Space....Pages 105-152
Roadmap Methods....Pages 153-199
Exact Cell Decomposition....Pages 200-247
Approximate Cell Decomposition....Pages 248-294
Potential Field Methods....Pages 295-355
Multiple Moving Objects....Pages 356-402
Kinematic Constraints....Pages 403-451
Dealing with Uncertainty....Pages 452-532
Movable Objects....Pages 533-586
Back Matter....Pages 587-651

✦ Subjects

Control, Robotics, Mechatronics; Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics); Electrical Engineering; Computer Imaging, Vision, Pattern Recognition and Graphics