Dealing with multiple objectives via active motion planning

High-speed assembly makes strict demands on path and trajectory planning systems. In such systems the stages of path planning, trajectory planning, and ´low-level´ control are normally separated, which admits functional simplicity but may not produce the most useful trajectories. Our active motion planner merges these levels by building a low-level controller into a potential-field planning loop. The input to the planner is a coarse set of via-points; the planner incorporates a goal that moves between these via-points, as in our previous work. The active motion planner produces relatively smooth paths; furthermore, by adjusting the relative gains of the active force (i.e., internal controller) and potential field terms the planner is able to avoid many of the local minima traps that bedevil potential field techniques. The combined planner is illustrated using a (simulated) PUMA robot arm.