Continuous Collision Detection for a Robotic Arm Mounted on a Cable-Driven Parallel Robot

TL;DR

This paper introduces a continuous collision detection method for a cable-driven parallel robot with an attached robotic arm, enabling efficient path validation by analyzing relative velocities and distances, integrated into existing planning software.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel continuous collision checking approach specifically designed for cable-driven parallel robots with robotic arms, improving validation accuracy over discretized methods.

Findings

The method successfully validated robot paths with fewer false positives.

Compared to discretized validation, the continuous method is more efficient.

Implementation within HPP software demonstrated practical applicability.

Abstract

A continuous collision checking method for a cable-driven parallel robot with an embarked robotic arm is proposed in this paper. The method aims at validating paths by checking for collisions between any pair of robot bodies (mobile platform, cables, and arm links). For a pair of bodies, an upper bound on their relative velocity and a lower bound on the distance between the bodies are computed and used to validate a portion of the path. These computations are done repeatedly until a collision is found or the path is validated. The method is integrated within the Humanoid Path Planner (HPP) software, tested with the cable-driven parallel robot CoGiRo, and compared to a discretized validation method.