A Configuration Space Reference Generation Approach for Real-Time Collision Avoidance of Industrial Robot Manipulators

In this work a novel approach for target reaching and collision avoidance in industrial robot manipulators is proposed. This method solely relies on the computation of the direct kinematics of the considered industrial manipulator in order to generate joint reference positions to perform real-time tracking in the operative space and avoidance of obstacles moving in the proximity of the robot. A comparison with a conventional model-based collision avoidance method has been carried out in a simulated industrial setting under different conditions, showing satisfactory results even in case of coarse sampling times. This makes the proposal suitable for filed real-time operations executed by industrial robots performing a task. The proposed approach has been deployed on the EPSON VT6 6-axis industrial manipulator, whose proprietary software has been interfaced with general-purpose robotic simulators in order to emulate complex and dynamic environments.