3D-Sensor Based Dynamic Path Planning and Obstacle Avoidance for Industrial Manipulators

Three-dimensional realtime characterization of the robot’s workspace offers good perspectives for efficient motion planning. In our approach, the robot’s environment is observed by Photonic Mixer Device cameras, providing depth information for each pixel. On that basis a 3-dimensional environment model is generated and optimized for path planning and obstacle avoidance. The path is continuously adapted to changes in the workspace to generate a smooth and safe motion towards the target position. All static and dynamic obstacles on its path are automatically avoided, which is a step towards the challenging objective to enable safe presence of humans in the work cell. Key technology and system design aspects are presented as well as a first characterisation of the achievable performance. Keywords: path planning, obstacle avoidance, human-robot-cooperation, workspace sensing, 3D-cameras