Path planning for robotic applications in roadway crack sealing

A method for the planning of robot manipulator paths is presented. This method uses data from a vision system which is isolated from the manipulator. Both systems are mounted on a moving vehicle. The approach accounts for the motion of the vehicle and the kinematic transformations between the camera, vehicle, and manipulator frames. It also is able to effectively extrapolate the vision data to form more connected sets of data, while maintaining a measure of the relative confidence of the resulting data. The planned paths which result can be used to drive a manipulator in either a fast open-loop mode, or a slow closed-loop mode, in order to track roadway cracks with a sealing tool. This path planning approach is currently implemented and is being tested on the prototype of an automatic crack sealing machine