Generation of partial medial axis for disassembly motion planning

An efficient approach is presented for determining disassembly motion plans of a subassembly in the free space within its parent subassembly. A two-step approach is presented to generating motion plans. First, all possible paths within any free space of the parent subassembly are generated using a partial medial axis. This is followed by a graph search for an optimal global path. Secondly, a collision-free motion is planned using the global path and the geometry of the moving subassembly. The authors focus on the first problem, i.e. generation of partial medial axis for disassembly motion planning. A method is given to determine a partial medial axis when the parent subassembly is a 2D polygon. A set of critical points within the given polygon is identified, and these critical points are then connected based on geometry constraints