Integration of real-time planning and control in an unstructured workspace

The real-time planning and control problems of a robot manipulator in an unstructured workspace are considered. Our goal is to control a robot to follow an unknown path. Difficulties arise when the robot is required to work in an unstructured workspace. Based on multisensor fusion, a novel strategy for integrating real-time planning and control is proposed to deal with the uncertainties in the environment. In the proposed scheme, a new hybrid position/force control strategy is utilized to maintain the contact between the robot and the unknown surface, while a new planner is designed to complete the path-following task without a priori knowledge of the path. In the paper, to achieve intelligent robot manipulation in an unstructured workspace, multi-sensor fusion is employed both for force-torque and visual sensors with complementary observed data compared to the traditional fusion schemes with redundant data.