Adaptation of Fast Converging Optimal Techniques to Path Planning of Hyper-Redundant Manipulators

A multi-pass distributed localized search technique to solve the problem of path planning of hyper-redundant manipulators for the shortest path in real-time in the presence of obstacles is proposed. The problem is approached from a control perspective as a shortest path Optimal control problem, where the configuration space is searched for path points that optimize a cost function. This method addresses the ‘’Curse of Dimensionality” of exhaustive search techniques via the multi-pass distributed local search and local minima of Greedy approach via a backtracking technique. Further, theoretical proof shows that the proposed technique converges to an optimal (if only one exists) or a suboptimal (if many exist) solution. The algorithm is implemented on a 9-DOF manipulator arm for various paths.https://ecommons.udayton.edu/stander_posters/1640/thumbnail.jp