US 12,330,310 B2
Collision detection useful in motion planning for robotics
William Thomas Floyd-Jones, Boston, MA (US); Sean Michael Murray, Cambridge, MA (US); George Dimitri Konidaris, Boston, MA (US); and Daniel Jeremy Sorin, Boston, MA (US)
Assigned to REALTIME ROBOTICS, INC., Boston, MA (US)
Appl. No. 17/270,597
Filed by REALTIME ROBOTICS, INC., Boston, MA (US)
PCT Filed Aug. 6, 2019, PCT No. PCT/US2019/045270
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Feb. 23, 2021,
PCT Pub. No. WO2020/040979, PCT Pub. Date Feb. 27, 2020.
Claims priority of provisional application 62/722,067, filed on Aug. 23, 2018.
Prior Publication US 2021/0178591 A1, Jun. 17, 2021
Int. Cl. B25J 9/16 (2006.01)
CPC B25J 9/1666 (2013.01) [B25J 9/1671 (2013.01); G05B 2219/40438 (2013.01); G05B 2219/40475 (2013.01)] 34 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A method of operation of at least one component of a processor-based system useful in motion planning for robotics, the method comprising:
during a configuration time,
for a robot represented by a kinematic model, generating a data structure representation of the robot, the data structure representation of the robot in a form of a hierarchical tree structure; and
for an environment, generating a data structure representation of a set of persistent obstacles in the environment, the data structure representation of the set of persistent obstacles in the environment including the representation of a first number of obstacles for which a respective volume in the environment occupied by each of the obstacles of the first number of obstacles is known at the configuration time; and
during a run time,
for each of at least a first number of poses of the robot, determining, by at least one set of circuitry, whether any portion of the robot will collide with another portion of the robot based at least in part on the data structure representation of the robot;
for each of at least a second number of poses of the robot, determining, by at least one set of circuitry, whether any portion of the robot will collide with any persistent obstacles in an environment in which the robot operates based at least in part on the data structure representation of the set of persistent obstacles in the environment;
for each of at least a third number of poses of the robot, determining, by at least one set of circuitry, whether any portion of the robot will collide with any transient obstacles in the environment based at least in part on a data structure representation of a set of transient obstacles in the environment, the data structure representation including a representation of a second number of obstacles in the environment, for which, a respective volume in the environment occupied by each of the obstacles of the second number of obstacles is known during at least some portion of the run time and for which the respective volume in the environment occupied by each of the obstacles is not known at the configuration time; and
providing a signal that represents whether or not a collision has been detected for at least one of the poses.