Time-varying obstacle avoidance for robot manipulators: Approaches and difficulties

This paper addresses an overview of time-varying obstacle avoidance problems for robotic manipulators. We propose four different approaches to solving these problems. They are the Heuristic Off-line (HOF) approach, the Heuristic On-line (HON) approach, the Analytic Off-line (AOF) approach, and the Analytic On-line (AON) approach. The AOF approach is particularly pursued and derived in this paper. Some fundamental difficulties are then discussed in the AOF approach. It is shown that the analytic approach is not always successful in solving the time-varying obstacle avoidance problems.