Maciejewski, Anthony A., authorFox, John J., authorIEEE, publisher2007-01-032007-01-031994Maciejewski, Anthony A. and John J. Fox, Path Planning and the Topology of Configuration Space, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation 9, no. 4 (August 1993): 444-456.http://hdl.handle.net/10217/67344This work considers the path planning problem for planar revolute manipulators operating in a workspace of polygonal obstacles. This problem is solved by determining the topological characteristics of obstacles in configuration space, thereby determining where feasible paths can be found. A collision-free path is then calculated by using the mathematical description of the boundaries of only those configuration space obstacles with which collisions are possible. The key to this technique is a simple test for determining whether two disjoint obstacles are connected in configuration space. This test allows the path planner to restrict its calculations to regions in which collision-free paths are guaranteed a priori, thus avoiding unnecessary computations and resulting in an efficient implementation. Typical timing results for environments consisting of four polyhedral obstacles comprising a total of 27 vertices are of the order of 22 ms on a SPARC-IPC workstation.born digitalarticleseng©1994 IEEE.Copyright and other restrictions may apply. User is responsible for compliance with all applicable laws. For information about copyright law, please see https://libguides.colostate.edu/copyright.manipulatorspath planningtopologyText