The robotic interception of moving objects in industrial settings: strategy development and experiment

A novel active prediction, planning, and execution (APPE) system is presented for the robotic interception of moving objects. An APPE system's objective is simply to move the robot to the earliest pregrasping location. A fine-motion tracking algorithm can take over the motion control at that point, utilizing proximity sensors mounted on the robot's end-effector. This approach eliminates the necessity of tracking the motion of the object, as required by conventional tracking-based techniques, where the distance between the robot's end-effector and the object is reduced continuously. In this paper, the proposed APPE system is first briefly introduced, and its individual modules are then discussed in detail. Simulation and experimental results are presented in support of the developed optimal-interception strategy.