Collision-free motion planning of a robot using safety arc

A new concept, the safety arc, is described for collision-free motion planning of a robot. In the configuration space, the safety arc is introduced considering both the motion constraints and the collision constraint using the distance function. The safety arc is an arc-shaped set composed of the candidate configuration points from the given constraints. Based on this concept, a method for transforming the problem of collision-free motion planning into a sub-optimal collision avoidance problem (SOCAP) with linear constraints is developed. The authors adopt the minimum distance between the initial and final configuration as the performance index, hence robot motion is planned in order to minimize the moving distance in the configuration space from the initial to the final configuration subject to the given constraints. The proposed method is verified through computer simulation.