Self-collision avoidance for n-link redundant manipulators

The self-collision avoidance problem for n-link redundant manipulators is treated via two approaches. One is to model the manipulator links as cylinders and check the intersection for all the pairs of the cylindrical links algorithmically in real time. The other consists of using the polygon approach to determine the safe moving range of each joint which guarantees no self-collision, like the human arm. Two objective functions were proposed which have the physical meaning of the maximum energy consumption and the maximum flexibility. The algorithm was applied to several redundant systems to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm