THE ROBOTIC INTERCEPTION OF MOVING-OBJECTS IN INDUSTRIAL SETTINGS - STRATEGY-DEVELOPMENT AND EXPERIMENT

A novel active prediction, planning, and execution (APPE) system is pr esented herein for the robotic interception of moving objects. The pri mary feature of the proposed APPE system is the ability to intercept t he object at an optimal rendezvous point, anywhere along its predicted trajectory, within the robot's workspace. For the interception of obj ects in industrial settings, the motion of which allows long-term pred ictability, this feature is a significant improvement over earlier APP E systems. These could only select a rendezvous point among a few nono ptimal interception points considered. An APPE system's objective is s imply to move the robot to the earliest pregrasping location. A fine-m otion tracking algorithm can take over the motion control at that poin t, utilizing proximity sensors mounted on the robot's end-effector. Th is approach eliminates the necessity of tracking the motion of the obj ect, as required by conventional tracking-based techniques, where the distance between the robot's end-effector and the object is reduced; c ontinuously. In this paper, the proposed APPE system is first briefly introduced, and its individual modules are thereafter discussed in det ail, Simulation and experimental results are presented in support of t he developed optimal-interception strategy.