Innovative Production Machines and Systems Conference

• G.I. Birbilis
• N.A. Aspragathos

• Keywords : Reactive snake-like motion, Redundant manipulators, Swarms, Obstacle avoidance, Geometric constraint satisfaction, Multi-Agent systems, Master - Vetoable slave relationship, Push-Pull-Rotate behaviour

A geometric constraint satisfaction approach to serial linkage (chain) motion and reactive obstacle avoidance, based on a multi-agent architecture, is presented. Application of this architecture to achieve real-time motion planning for serial manipulators and mobile robot snake-line swarm formations is suggested. A hierarchy of “Master – Slave” relationships is used, with the event of an autonomous motion of a controller agent propagating to its two neighbouring ones in the formation chain and progressively further on towards the two endpoints of the chain. At each propagation step, a constraint preservation mechanism enforces the respecting of minimum and maximum distance constraints between pairs of consecutive chain agents. The emergent behaviour of the multi-agent system equals to having the moving part of the chain push or pull the two subparts of the chain it connects. To cater for fixed base manipulators, and to allow replaning in case some slave part of the chain formation can’t adapt to its master’s motion, being trapped in some obstacles or malfunctioning, the notion of a “Master – Vetoable slave” relationship is used, where a slave part can object (veto) to the motion of its master part.

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Robot140.jpg	108.76 KB
140joints.wmv	1.02 MB
14joints.wmv	1.54 MB
IPROMS_BirbilisAspragathos_PPT.wmv	16.27 MB
IPROMS_BirbilisAspragathos_noSound.ppt	263.5 KB
PID169932.pdf	230.42 KB

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