Experimental Results of Sensor Based Planning for Hyper-redundant Manipulators

Abstract

This paper presents a dual resolution local sensor based planning method for hyper redundant robot mechanisms. Two classes of sensor feedback control methods working at different sampling rates and different spatial resolutions are considered - full shape modification (FSM) and partial shape modification (PSM). FSM and PSM cooperate to utilize a mechanism's hyper redundancy to enable both local obstacle avoidance and end effector placement in real time. These methods have been implemented on a thirty degree of freedom hyper redundant manipulator which has eleven ultrasonic distance measurement sensors and twenty infrared proximity sensors. The implementation of these algorithms in a dual CPU real time control computer, an innovative sensor bus architecture, and a novel graphical control interface are described. Experimental results obtained using this test bed show the efficacy of the proposed method.