Collision Avoidance Method For Robotic Modular Home Prefabrication

As the cost to use industrial robots decrease, their application in modular construction has garnered attention in recent years. Studies have been conducted to implement the robot arm in modular home construction. However, a collision avoidance method for the prefabrication process has rarely been discussed. Therefore, this research proposes a collision avoidance method with a sampling-based motion planning algorithm. A collision-check method with multiple level-of-detail colliders is also developed to increase the efficiency of the calculation process. The method is validated as having more than an 80% success rate in finding collision-free paths for 94% of the collided components of five different wall panels in a simulated environment. An in-lab experiment was also conducted to validate the workability of the developed method on a real robot arm. The results confirm that applying the developed method can help the engineer find collision-free paths for the modular home prefabrication process.