Path Planning for a Collaborative Robot with a Long Tool Through a Constricted Passage

Constricted passages such as tubes may be out of the view of the robot vision system, and the wrist-force data may be useful in such cases. Collaborative robots (Cobots), which are equipped with precision wrist-force sensors, are suitable for sharing the workspace safely with human workers and other robots and devices. The data from the force sensor allows building more intelligent algorithms for robot control, and plan access to relatively unstructured obstacles. In this work, an attempt is made to model obstacles and constricted passages graphically for the digital-twin implementation of a collaborative robot and use the same for motion planning in the absence of vision sensors. The main scope of this work is to build the graphical framework for the digital twin and link the same with path planning algorithms in the public domain using MoveIt and Robot Operating System (ROS). Motion visualization is implemented using another software, called RViz. The co-simulation between MoveIt and RViz is, in turn, linked to the physical robot, or optionally, the simulation environment provided by the robot supplier.