Motion planning for many degrees of freedom: sequential search with backtracking

Motion planners for highly redundant arms are discussed. The crux of the approach is to plan the motion of each link, starting from the base link, sequentially, thereby solving n single-link problems. The authors present a backtracking mechanism for the motion planner to make it more effective in planning collision-free paths in cluttered situations. The level of backtracking k is an adjustable parameter. The time complexity of the algorithm is exponential in k, but is polynomial for a given k. In k, the level of backtracking, a user-determined parameter is provided, that can trade off computational speed versus the completeness of the planner. Experiments were conducted with up to ten degree-of-freedom manipulators in quite cluttered environments, and the planner successfully generated a collision-free path in the order of a few minutes