Path planning for robot arms operating in a common workspace

A method for collision-free path planning for two robot arms operating in a common workspace is presented. This method assumes that the common workspace is divided into discrete regions that can be regarded as common resources. These resources are engaged as the robot arms move along their paths. Robot arms are allocated the master/slave status, with the master arm given priority to complete its tasks. The performance of this method is compared with that of the approach which allows only one robot arm to be present in the common workspace. Although the proposed method has been primarily developed for offline path planning, it can be also, with additional assumptions, used for online path determination