Abstract The real-time and reliable collision detection is the vital basis for the robotic motion control in real applications. In this work, the minimal distance calculation between the industrial robot and its workspace is presented. This method first uses circular/polygonal slices to represent robotic sub-structures with curved edges more accurately, and uses polygonal planes to construct its workspace. Being the basis of the distance calculation, the shortest distance between the spatial circle/polygon and the polygonal plane, as well as that between the circular/polygonal plane and the polygonal plane are first modelled through spatial relation analysis. The simulation validation indicates that the proposed algorithm is more efficient and reliable than both the point-clouds-based and bounding-volume-hierarchies-based algorithms. And the influence of the refinement size on the performance of the proposed model is revealed. Finally, the application example shows that this work is a significant contribution for the collision-free motion control of the industrial robot. The proposed algorithm can also be applied to the distance calculation of other complex objects because of the generality of the proposed slices representation way.

中文翻译：

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基于圆/多边形切片表示的工业机器人与其工作空间之间的最小距离计算

摘要 实时可靠的碰撞检测是实际应用中机器人运动控制的重要基础。在这项工作中，提出了工业机器人与其工作空间之间的最小距离计算。该方法首先使用圆形/多边形切片更准确地表示具有弯曲边缘的机器人子结构，并使用多边形平面构建其工作空间。作为距离计算的基础，首先通过空间关系分析建模空间圆/多边形与多边形平面之间的最短距离，以及圆形/多边形平面与多边形平面之间的最短距离。仿真验证表明，所提出的算法比基于点云和基于边界体积层次的算法更有效和可靠。并揭示了细化大小对所提出模型性能的影响。最后，应用实例表明，这项工作对工业机器人的无碰撞运动控制做出了重大贡献。由于所提出的切片表示方式具有通用性，所提出的算法也可以应用于其他复杂对象的距离计算。