Manipulator path planning for pick-and-place operations with obstacles avoidance: An A* algorithm approach

Abstract

This paper presents a path planning method for pick-and-place operations with obstacles in the work environment. The method developed is designed to plan the motion of an anthropomorphic manipulator in cluttered environments. The graph search algorithm A* applied to the configuration free space is used to calculate the shortest path between two points avoiding collisions with obstacles and joint limitations. Applying this algorithm in a six dimension space presents some constraints related to memory consumption and processing time, which were tackled using configuration space partition and selecting neighbourhood cells, respectively. Using the configuration space makes it possible for the entire robot body to avoid collisions with obstacles. Moreover, the system implemented proves that applying A* in high dimension configuration spaces is possible with admissible results. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.