Development of the “Quad-SCARA” platform and its collision avoidance based on Buffered Voronoi Cell

Abstract

As a solution to soft material manipulation, dual-arm robots that are capable of multi-point grasping have become the latest trend due to their higher capability and efficiency. To explore further development in soft material manipulation and go beyond the hardware limit of dual arms, in this paper the robot platform “Quad-SCARA” that consists of four Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) is developed and introduced. With the base of hardware platform, a novel collision avoidance system designed for the motion planning of Quad-SCARA in multi-point grasping state is proposed. This system is inspired by the idea of “Buffered Voronoi Cell (BVC),” an algorithm originally proposed for multi-agent collision avoidance. After appropriate adaptation and new proposition in implementation of BVC, the experiments of folding and spreading a handkerchief are performed, and the results in simulation and robot experiments are presented and discussed for the validation and evaluation of entire system.

Editorial of the special issue: innovative robot design for special applications

“…In ref. [10], a novel collision avoidance system designed for the motion planning of Quad-SCARA in multipoint grasping state is proposed. The system, based on buffered Voronoi cells, is validated through complex experimental tests, such as folding and spreading a handkerchief.…”