Motion Constraints from Contact Geometry: Representation and Analysis

A method to determine constraints on translational and rotational motion of planar and 3-D objects from their contact geometry is presented. Translations are represented by spatial vectors and rotations by axes in space. For each of these, a geometric realization (M a ) of the space of motion parameters is created. Subspaces in M a that represent the range of values of motion parameters that are `disallowed' due to the contact are identified. The geometric realization makes it easier to visualize results, provides a good measure of the extent of restraints between objects, reduces computations by eliminating redundant constraints, and simplifies computation of net constraints. The proposed representation can be used effectively to automate the evaluation of motion constraints. In Proceedings: IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation, Nice, France May 10-15, 1992, pp: 2178-2185 1 Introduction Automatic generation of high level assembly plans from computer models of assemblies has be..