Fast collision detection scheme by recursive decomposition of a manipulator workspace

This paper explains a simple method for fast collision detection in manipulator tasks. We show from examples taken in the literature that solutions to this problem can be chosen among a continuum of schemes, according to the method selected for representing the workspace and the robot, and the amount of computations performed before testing a particular trajectory. We then describe a method based on a recursive decomposition of the workspace, also referred to as an octree model, as a good tradeoff for a class of applications.