Abstract
We consider the following problem: given a robot system, find a minimal-time trajectory that goes from a start state to a goal state while avoiding obstacles by a speed-dependent safety margin and respecting dynamics bounds. In [1] we developed a provably good approximation algorithm for the minimum-time trajectory problem for a robot system with decoupled dynamics bounds (e.g., a point robot in ℝ3). This algorithm differs from previous work in three ways. It is possible (1) to bound the goodness of the approximation by an error termɛ; (2) to bound the computational complexity of our algorithm polynomially; and (3) to express the complexity as a polynomial function of the error term. Hence, given the geometric obstacles, dynamics bounds, and the error termɛ, the algorithm returns a solution that isɛ-close to optimal and requires only a polynomial (in (1/ɛ)) amount of time.
We extend the results of [1] in two ways. First, we modify it to halve the exponent in the polynomial bounds from 6d to 3d, so that the new algorithm isO(c d N 1/ɛ)3d), whereN is the geometric complexity of the obstacles andc is a robot-dependent constant. Second, the new algorithm finds a trajectory that matches the optimal in time with anɛ factor sacrificed in the obstacle-avoidance safety margin. Similar results hold for polyhedral Cartesian manipulators in polyhedral environments.
The new results indicate that an implementation of the algorithm could be reasonable, and a preliminary implementation has been done for the planar case.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
J. Canny, B. Donald, J. Reif, and P. Xavier, On the complexity of kinodynamic planning,Proceedings of the 29th Annual Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science, White Plains, New York, 1988, pp. 306–316.
J. Canny, A. Rege, and J. Reif, An exact algorithm for kinodynamic planning in the plane,Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry, Berkeley, California, 1990, pp. 271–280.
P. Xavier, Provably good approximation algorithms for optimal kinodynamic robot motion plans. Technical Report CUCS-TR92-1279, Computer Science Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, April 1992. Ph.D. thesis.
J. Canny and J. Reif, New lower bound techniques for robot motion planning,Proceedings of the 28th Annual Symposium on the Foundations of Computer Science, Los Angeles, California, 1987.
B. Donald, P. Xavier, J. Canny, and J. Reif, Kinodynamic motion planning,Journal of the ACM,40(5), 1993, 1048–1066. Journal version of [1].
B. Donald and P. Xavier, Provably good approximation algorithms for optimal kinodynamic planning for Cartesian robots and open chain manipulators. Technical Report TR-1095, Department of Computer Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, February 1990. Supercedes TR-971.
B. Donald and P. Xavier, Provably good approximation algorithms for optimal kinodynamic planning for Cartesian robots and open-chain manipulators,Algorithmica, this issue, pp. 480–530.
C. H. Papadimitriou and K. Steiglitz,Combinatorial Optimization: Algorithms and Complexity. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1982.
C. H. Papadimitriou, An algorithm for shortest path motion in three dimensions,Information Processing Letters,20, 1985, 259–263.
M. Brady, J. Hollerbach, T. Johnson, T. Lozano-Pérez, and M. Mason, editors,Robot Motion: Planning and Control. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982.
C. Yap, Algorithmic motion planning. In J. Schwartz and C. Yap, editors,Advances in Robotics, Volume 1. Erlbaum, Hillsdale, New Jersey, 1986.
J. M. Hollerbach, Dynamic scaling of manipulator trajectories. A.I. Memo 700, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983.
J. Bobrow, S. Dubowsky, and J. Gibson, Time-optimal control of robot manipulators along specified paths,International Journal of Robotics Research,4(3), 1985.
H. M. Schaettler, On the optimality of bang-bang trajectories in ℝ3,Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society,16(1), 1987, 113–116.
E. Sontag and H. Sussmann, Remarks on the time-optimal control of two-link manipulators,Proceedings of the 24th Conference on Decision and Control, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, 1985, pp. 1646–1652.
E. Sontag and H. Sussmann, Time-optimal control of manipulators. Technical Report, Department of Mathematics, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1986.
G. Sahar and J. Hollerbach, Planning of minimum-time trajectories for robot arms,Proceedings of the 1985 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, St. Louis, Missouri, 1985, pp. 751–758.
Z. Shiller and S. Dubowsky, Global time-optimal motions of robotic manipulators in the presence of obstacles,Proceedings of the 1988 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1988, pp. 370–375.
C. Ó'Dúnlaing, Motion planning with inertial constraints,Algorithmica,2(4), 1987, 431–475.
S. Fortune and G. Wilfong, Planning constrained motion,Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, Chicago, Illinois, 1988, pp. 445–459.
G. Wilfong, Motion planning for an autonomous vehicle,Proceedings of the 1988 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1988, pp. 529–533.
P. Jacobs and J. Canny, Planning smooth paths for mobile robots,Proceedings of the 1989 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Scottsdale, Arizona, 1989, pp. 2–7.
B. Donald and P. Xavier, Time-safety trade-offs and a bang-bang algorithm for kinodynamic planning,Proceedings of the 1991 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Sacramento, California, 1991, pp. 552–557.
T. Lozano-Pérez, Spatial planning: a configuration space approach,IEEE Transactions on Computers,32(2), 1983, 108–120. Also A.I. Memo 605, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 1982.
H. Edelsbrunner,Algorithms in Combinatorial Geometry. EATCS 10. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1987.
L. Guibas and R. Seidel, Computing convolutions by reciprocal search,Proceedings of the 4th ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry, Urbana, Illinois, 1988, pp. 90–99.
J. Canny, Collision detection for moving polyhedra,IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence,8(2), 1986, 200–209.
J. Canny and B. Donald, Simplified Voronoi diagrams,Discrete and Computational Geometry,3(3), 1988, 219–236.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Additional information
Communicated by J.-D. Boissonnat.
This paper describes research done at the Computer Science Robotics Laboratory at Cornell University. Support for our robotics research there is provided in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant Nos. IRI-8802390 and IRI-9000532, by a Presidential Young Investigator award, and in part by the Mathematical Sciences Institute, Intel Corporation, and AT&T Bell Laboratories.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Donald, B.R., Xavier, P. Provably good approximation algorithms for optimal kinodynamic planning: Robots with decoupled dynamics bounds. Algorithmica 14, 443–479 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01586636
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01586636