Generation of a 3D robot path for collision avoidance of a workpiece based on voxel and vector field

Recently, workers have been operating together with robots in factory environments. This type of working environment may result in conflicts between robots and workers when the robots are equipped with a large end effector or when carrying large workpieces. This paper proposes a new approach for creating a collision-free 3D robot path using voxels and a vector field to prevent the collision between a large workpiece and obstacles including workers and machines. To create a collision-free robot path in a complex 3D work environment, the voxel elements are used to model workspaces. The vector field is used to find the 3D optimal robot path, which is like the potential field used in the two-dimensional optimal problem. Once the start and end points of the robot and the original path of the robot are determined in offline programming, the optimal 3D path of the workpiece is calculated.