Aiaa - 94 - 1294 - Cp Extensibility in Local Sensor Based Planning for Hyper - Redundant Manipulators ( Robot Snakes )

This paper extends a local sensor based planning method for hyper-redundant robot mechanisms. In a previous paper, sensor feedback control methods are considered. A highly localized sensor feedback method for hyper-redundand manipulators is termed, partial shape modification (PSM). A PSM utilizes a mechanism's hyper-redundancy to enable both local obstacle avoidance and end-effector placement in real time. This paper considers the situation in which the limits of a PSM is violated. In other words, what does the robot do when it can not only locally adapt to the environment. Local sensor based planning has been implemented on a thirty degree of freedom hyper-redundant manipulator which has eleven ultrasonic distance measurement sensors and twenty infrared proximity sensors. The robot is controlled by a real time control computer which communicates with sensors through an innovative sensor bus architecture. Experimental results obtained using this test bed show the efficacy of the proposed method.