Motion planning based on geometric features

Abstract

This paper describes the foundations and algorithms of a new alternative to improve the connectivity of the configuration space using probabilistic roadmap methods (PRM). The main idea is to use some geometric features about the obstacles and the robot into work-space, and to obtain useful configurations close to the obstacles to find collision free paths. In order to reach a better performance of these planners, we use the "straightness" feature and propose a new heuristic which allows us to solve the narrow corridor problems. We apply this technique to solve the motion planning problems for a specific kind of robots, "free flying objects" with six degrees of freedom (dof), three degrees used for position and the last three used for orientation. We have implemented the method in three dimensional space and we show results that allow us to be sure that some geometric features on the work-space can be used to improve the connectivity of configuration space and to solve the narrow corridor problems.