Planning nonholonomic motions for manipulated objects

Considers the motions of objects moved by manipulators that can only perform some specific actions. These motions are fundamentally nonholonomic. They consist of a sequence of maneuvers, each one being a permitted action of a manipulator. We present a general method for planning such motions while minimizing the number of maneuvers. The object's state space is searched by performing step motions corresponding to the permitted manipulator actions. We distinguish between low-dimensional cases in which the system's state space is explored extensively, and high-dimensional cases. In the latter we introduce the motion constraints progressively. Successive explorations are performed in a neighborhood of a current path that converges toward a solution.