Automatic path planning for coordinate measuring machines

This paper describes the path planning module of a computer-aided tactile inspection planning (CATIP) system. The path planner is based on Dijkistra's shortest path algorithm combined with collision detection routines. The working space is dicretized into a regular grid of nodes. The workpiece, the objects in the environment and the probe are automatically approximated by a set of cartesian boxes generated from their octree representation. Optimization and robustness are the main issues considered in this work, and the use of heuristics is completely avoided. The results are demonstrated using an example.