Optimal manipulator path planning with obstacles using disjunctive programming

In this paper we present a novel, complete algorithm for manipulator path planning with obstacles. Previous approaches have used incomplete methods to make the problem tractable. By posing the problem as a disjunctive program we are able to use existing constrained optimization methods to generate optimal trajectories. Furthermore, our method plans entirely in the workspace of the manipulator, eliminating the costly process of mapping the obstacles from the workspace into the configuration space