Dan Halperin, Tel-Aviv University

Abstract

Planning motion for robots and other artifacts toward desired goal positions while avoiding obstacles on the way becomes harder when the environment is tight or densely cluttered. Indeed, prevalent motion-planning techniques often fail in such settings. The talk centers on recently-developed efficient algorithms to cope with motion in tight quarters.

We study several variants of the problem of moving a convex polytope in three dimensions through a rectangular (and sometimes more general) window. Specifically, we study variants in which the motion is restricted to translations only, discuss situations in which such a motion can be reduced to sliding (translation in a fixed direction) and present efficient algorithms for those variants. We show cases where sliding is insufficient but purely transnational motion works, or where purely transnational motion is insufficient and rotation must be included. Finally, we explore the general setup, where we want to plan a general motion (with all six degrees of freedom) for the polytope through the window and present an efficient algorithm for this problem, with running time close to O(n^4), where n is the number of edges of the polytope. (Joint work with Micha Sharir and Itay Yehuda.)

As time permits I will present additional recent results for motion in tight settings in assembly planning, fixture design, and casting and molding.

Bio: Dan Halperin is a professor of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. His main field of research is Computational Geometry and Its Applications. A major focus of his work has been in research and development of robust geometric algorithms, principally as part of the CGAL project and library. The application areas he is interested in include robotics, automated manufacturing, algorithmic motion planning and 3D printing. Halperin is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Fellow. http://acg.cs.tau.ac.il/danhalperin

SPECIAL NOTE: This seminar is presented online only.

You can join via Webex

Meeting number (access code):  120 418 0979

Meeting password: 1234

Presented in association with the DATA-INSPIRE TRIPODS Institute.