Dynamic motion planning for robots in partially unknown environments

In both domestic and also industrial settings robotic Co-Workers are expected to become a commodity. Even though the particular application areas may vastly change, a robot always needs to act in a dynamic and partially unknown environment. It shall reactively generate motions and prevent upcoming collisions. If contact is desired or inevitable, it has to handle it robustly and safely. For preventing collisions in a real-time fashion the Circular Fields method is a powerful scheme, which we developed further and evaluated extensively. After an initial analysis in rather complex 2D simulations, we extend the evaluation to 3D as well as 6D, where we introduce a hybrid strategy based on Circular and Potential Fields. Finally, the 6D implementation of a hybrid Circular & Potential Fields approach is used to perform the experimental analysis for static multi-object parcours and to avoid a dynamically moving human in a 6D task motion. Based on the algorithms for collision avoidance we also develop and experimentally verify an algorithm for tactile exploration of complex planar 3D wire elements, whose structure is a-priori unknown.