Automatic Feasibility Verification of Object Configurations: A New Approach Based on Feature Interaction Matrices

A new approach based on qualitative feature interaction matrices (FIMs) to determine the feasibility of contact states between a pair of spatial polyhedra is presented. Determining feasibility of contact state descriptions can potentially be used in automatic generation of assembly strategy. Feature interaction matrices are exploited in this paper to model and characterize contact states. A hypothetical contact description in FIM is geometrically feasible if there exists a configuration such that the kinematic constraints imposed by all elements of the FIM are satisfied and the two polyhedra do not penetrate each other. In this paper, an optimization method is used to determine whether kinematic constraints are satisfied. A spatial reasoning technique is developed to perform penetration checks.