GEOMETRIC MODELLING AND ROBOTICS
Stephen Cameron, Joe Pitt‐Francis · International Journal of Shape Modeling · 2000
Robots and machine tools are physical devices whose acceptable actions depend critically on the shape of their environments, yet traditionally there has been little research that looks specifically at the best way to combine geometric modelling and robotics. One crucial issue is that of planning collision-free paths, but there are few practical implementations at present. We have proceeded by separating out issues of geometry from those of planning. Over the last decade we have developed a robot planning shell that contains an efficient routine for computing distances between modelled objects, and within which we write our planners. Advantages include good modularity and performance scaling; the ability to migrate planners to more complex geometric representations as they are required; and the ability to refine plans with the incorporation of sensed data. The success of the system leads us to suggests that similar proximity functions should be provided by future modelling frameworks.