Virtual environments for Internet-based robots. II. Path planning

For pt.I. see ibid., p.383-8. This paper addresses the issue of path planning in a virtual environment (VE) for the control of an Internet-based robot manipulator. A hybrid method is proposed in which the dimension of the path-planning problem is reduced by separating the problem of planning the position of the gripper from that of planning the pose of the gripper. A global configuration-space technique is used for the former and a local operational-space technique is used for the latter. Particular attention is paid to fundamental issues such as mapping the graphical model into configuration space, on-line collision detection and obstacle avoidance in the VE.