A multi-layer approach for interactive path planning control

This work considers path-planning processes for manipulation tasks such as assembly, maintenance or disassembly in a Virtual Reality (VR) context. The approach consists in providing a collaborative system associating a user immersed in VR and an automatic path planning process. It is based on semantic, topological and geometric representations of the environment and the planning process is split in two phases: coarse and fine planning. The automatic planner suggests a path to the user and guides him trough a haptic device. The user can escape from the proposed solution if he wants to explore a possible better way. In this case, the interactive system detects the user's intention in real-time and computes a new path starting from the user's guess. Experiments illustrate the different aspects of the approach: multi-representation of the environment, path planning process, user's intent prediction and control sharing.