Disassembly Path Planning for Complex Articulated Objects

Sampling-based path planning algorithms are powerful tools for computing constrained disassembly motions. This paper presents a variant of the Rapidly-exploring Random Tree (RRT) algorithm particularly devised for the disassembly of objects with articulated parts. Configuration parameters generally play two different roles in this type of problems: some of them are essential for the disassembly task, while others only need to move if they hinder the progress of the disassembly process. The proposed method is based on such a partition of the configuration parameters. Results show a remarkable performance improvement as compared to standard path planning techniques. The paper also shows practical applications of the presented algorithm in robotics and structural bioinformatics.