The Robotics Institute

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Abstract

This paper revisits the notion of free configuration space and reviews some of its path-connectivity related properties. Literature on motion planning reveals at least three different definitions for the free configuration space of a robot in the presence of obstacles. This paper shows that, assuming regularity of both object and obstacles, those three definitions are equivalent. We show the three definitions regularize the free space and therefore prevent the existence of “thin bits”, or low dimensional strata. The paper concludes discussing a series of properties regarding the existence and smoothability of contact-free paths between pairs of configurations.

Keywords

Configuration space, Path planning

Notes

Associated Center(s) / Consortia: Center for the Foundations of Robotics

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Manipulation Lab

Associated Project(s): Simple Hands

Number of pages: 4

Text Reference

Alberto Rodriguez and Matthew T. Mason, "Path-Connectivity of the Free Space," IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO), Vol. 28, No. 5, October, 2012, pp. 1177-1180.

BibTeX Reference

@article{Rodriguez_2012_7029,
   author = "Alberto Rodriguez and Matthew T. Mason",
   title = "Path-Connectivity of the Free Space",
   journal = "IEEE Transactions on Robotics (TRO)",
   pages = "1177-1180",
   month = "October",
   year = "2012",
   volume = "28",
   number = "5",
}

The Robotics Institute

Menu