NEO: A Novel Expeditious Optimisation Algorithm for Reactive Motion Control of Manipulators
This provides a reactive motion control solution for robotic manipulators in dynamic environments, though it is incremental as it complements rather than replaces state-of-the-art planners.
The authors tackled the problem of reactive motion control for manipulators by introducing NEO, a fast controller that avoids obstacles and maximizes manipulability, solving a convex quadratic program in a few milliseconds on a 7-DOF robot.
We present NEO, a fast and purely reactive motion controller for manipulators which can avoid static and dynamic obstacles while moving to the desired end-effector pose. Additionally, our controller maximises the manipulability of the robot during the trajectory, while avoiding joint position and velocity limits. NEO is wrapped into a strictly convex quadratic programme which, when considering obstacles, joint limits, and manipulability on a 7 degree-of-freedom robot, is generally solved in a few ms. While NEO is not intended to replace state-of-the-art motion planners, our experiments show that it is a viable alternative for scenes with moderate complexity while also being capable of reactive control. For more complex scenes, NEO is better suited as a reactive local controller, in conjunction with a global motion planner. We compare NEO to motion planners on a standard benchmark in simulation and additionally illustrate and verify its operation on a physical robot in a dynamic environment. We provide an open-source library which implements our controller.