Technical Report: Fast Robot Arm Inverse Kinematics and Path Planning Under Complex Obstacle Constraint

Described here is a simple, reliable method for rapid computation of robot arm inverse kinematic solutions and motion path plans in the presence of complex obstructions. The method is based on a restricted form of the MSC (map-seeking circuit) algorithm, optimized to exploit the characteristics of practical arm configurations. MSC representation naturally incorporates both arm and obstacle geometries. The consequent performance on modern hardware is suitable for applications requiring real-time response. On high-end GPGPU hardware computation of both final pose for an 8 DOF arm and a smooth obstacle-avoiding motion path to that pose takes approximately 200msec.