Path-planning research of robots based on wave expansion algorithm

Instead of using the tedious process of robot teaching, an off-line path planning algorithm based on wave expansion method has been developed for industrial robots. The continuous Cartesian W-space in world coordinates is discretized into an equidistant 3D-grid and then the free points and obstacle points are indicated by different numbers. By use of the wave expansion method, the free points are further assigned a marked number. The path is found based on the assigned marked number via wave expansion method. As comparison, depth-first search method is presented. The proposed algorithm is tested on a 6-DOF industrial robot and the expected results are obtained.