Title
Time-optimal task scheduling for articulated manipulators in environments cluttered with obstacles
Abstract
This paper proposes a new approach for solving a generalization of the task scheduling problem for articulated robots (either redundant or non-redundant), where the robot's 2D environment is cluttered with obstacles of arbitrary size, shape and location, while a set of task-points are located in the robot's free-space. The objective is to determine the optimum collision-free robot's tip tour through all task-points passing from each one exactly once and returning to the initial task-point. This scheduling problem combines two computationally NP-hard problems: the optimal scheduling of robot tasks and the collision-free motion planning between the task-points. The proposed approach employs the bump-surface (B-Surface) concept for the representation of the 2D robot's environment by a B-Spline surface embedded in 3D Euclidean space. The time-optimal task scheduling is being searched on the generated B-Surface using a genetic algorithm (GA) with a special encoding in order to take into consideration the infinite configurations corresponding to each task-point. The result of the GA's searching constitutes the solution to the task scheduling problem and satisfies optimally the task scheduling criteria and objectives. Extensive experimental results show the efficiency and the effectiveness of the proposed method to determine the collision-free motion among obstacles.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1017/S0263574709005748
Robotica
Keywords
DocType
Volume
collision-free motion,task scheduling criterion,articulated manipulator,Time-optimal task scheduling,collision-free motion planning,articulated robot,time-optimal task scheduling,optimal scheduling,task scheduling problem,optimum collision-free robot,robot task,scheduling problem
Journal
28
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
3
0263-5747
8
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.77
16
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
E. K. Xidias1141.27
P. Th. Zacharia2331.95
Nikos A. Aspragathos324337.69