Virtual environments for internet-based robots- II: path planning

This paper addresses the issue of path planning in a virtual
environment (VE) for the control of an Internet-based robot manipulator.
A hybrid method is proposed in which the dimension of
the path-planning problem is reduced by separating the problem
of planning the position of the gripper from that of planning the
pose of the gripper. A global configuration-space technique is used
for the former and a local operational-space technique is used for
the latter. Particular attention is paid to fundamental issues such
as mapping the graphical model into configuration space, on-line
collision detection and obstacle avoidance in the VE.