Collision-free and smooth trajectory computation in cluttered environments

  • Authors:
  • Jia Pan;Liangjun Zhang;Dinesh Manocha

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US;Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, US;Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Robotics Research
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

We present a novel trajectory computation algorithm to smooth piecewise linear collision-free trajectories computed by sample-based motion planners. Our approach uses cubic B-splines to generate trajectories that are C2 almost everywhere, except on a few isolated points. The algorithm performs local spline refinement to compute smooth, collision-free trajectories and it works well even in environments with narrow passages. We also present a fast and reliable algorithm for collision checking between a robot and the environment along the B-spline trajectories. We highlight the performance of our algorithm on complex benchmarks, including path computation for rigid and articulated models in cluttered environments.