Obstacle avoidance based on skeleton for the redundant Manipulator

For use in unstructured domains, highly redundant robotic systems need both deliberative and compliant control schemes, to avoid collision and safely interact with the dynamic environment. Aiming at the shortcoming of the traditional method of path planning using merely on the typical structure of the manipulator, a new algorithm, named the “skeleton extraction based on 3D-sensor”, is proposed for the real-time generation of collision avoidance motions. The algorithm is applied to get the distances of the multiple possible collision points and to establish a repulsive force. Then, the Robot Operating System (ROS) framework and a collaborative robot manipulator validate the proposed method. The method was tested by tests by a 7DOF C++ model of the collaborative robot manipulator in the Vrep and ROS environment. The results show that the proposed method can avoid local minima traps and eliminate oscillations effectively.