H-RRT-C: Haptic motion planning with contact

Abstract

This paper focuses on interactive motion planning processes intended to assist a human operator when simulating industrial tasks in Virtual Reality. Such applications need motion planning on surfaces. We propose an original haptic path planning algorithm with contact, H-RRT-C, based on a RRT planner and a real-time interactive approach involving a haptic device for computer-operator authority sharing. Force feedback allows the human operator to keep contact consistently and provides the user with the feel of the contact, and the force applied by the operator on the haptic device is used to control the roadmap extension. Our approach has been validated through two experimental examples, and brings significant improvement over state of the art methods in both free and contact space to solve path-planning queries and contact operations such as insertion or sliding in highly constrained environments.