A robot programming environment based on free-form CAD modelling

This paper presents the mathematical and computational foundations of a robot programming environment embedded within a CAD system. The key ideas behind this system is that it will work offline, it will allow a high-level of task abstraction and it will be usable by designers and engineers who have a good knowledge of the desired task but only a basic grounding in robot engineering. In this paper we begin with a discussion of how robot workspace can be modelled using free-form CAD design concepts. The core of the paper is concerned with the application of these to well known problems of collision detection and path planning, showing how algorithms developed in CAD can be applied to these new problem-areas in an efficient way. In the closing section we use these ideas to consider the development of new, graphically-based, robot programming systems.