Time Optimal Trajectory Planning in Dynamic Environments

This paper presents a method for motion planning in dynamic environments, subject to robot dynamics and actuator constraints. The time optimal trajectory is computed by first generating an initial guess using the concept of velocity obstacle. The initial guess, computed by a global search over a tree of avoidance maneuvers, is then optimized using a dynamic optimization. This method is applicable to repetitive tasks in known dynamic environments, as is demonstrated for a planar robot manipulator. 1 Introduction This paper addresses the problem of motion planning in dynamic environments. Typical examples of dynamic environments include manufacturing tasks in which robot manipulators track and retrieve parts from moving conveyers. Motion planning in dynamic environments requires the simultaneous computation of a collision free path from start to goal, and of the velocity profile along the path, satisfying system dynamics and actuator constraints. Previous methods for motion planning in..