Industrial robot that moves around unexpected obstacles with a minimum distance

Maneuvering an industrial robot to avoid a collision with obstacles in real time involves not only the fast obstacle detection and description, but also fast decision making. The problem is complicated since no a-priori knowledge about obstacles is assumed. In addition, they may appear in the robot\´s path unexpectedly. In this paper, the detection and description are achieved by the use of stereo cameras. Through the top view of the workspace, the cameras furnish the silhouette as well as heights of obstacles. To speed up the image processing, pixel array is grouped into patches and the maximum height of each patch is determined. To simplify the obstacle description in the computer, "pillar" model of the bounding polyhedra is constructed. Fast decision making is accomplished by structuring a finite number of possible collision avoidance paths. Path feasibility is determined at the "module aisle" level while optimization is performed at the subpath level so that the order of the problem is reduced from 63 to 3 ?? 6.