Collision prevention in robotic simulation

Robotic development systems that include a graphical simulation facility are of considerable interest, and it is important that such systems be able to detect and prevent collisions between objects. It is the latter problem, collision prevention, that is treated in this paper. The authors first describe the hierarchical structure used to represent objects in our graphical simulation facility. They then describe a branch and bound algorithm for computing interobject distance, which permits the system to alert the user in advance to the possibility of collision. Finally, the user interface of the present system will be described, and representative execution times for interobject distance calculation will be given; these execution times indicate that the algorithm is significantly more efficient than straightforward interobject distance calculation.