Motion Planning of Fully Actuated Closed Kinematic Chains With Revolute Joints: A Comparative Analysis

This letter provides a comparative analysis of common strategies for sampling-based motion planning of fully actuated closed kinematic chains with revolute joints. Three strategies are reviewed: singularity sampling, swapping between the possible passive chains while using the active-passive chains kinematic approach, and using Newton-Raphson projections. The strategies are compared using analytical and empirical results. Various measures, such as sampling time and visibility, are used to analyze the strategies in several dual-arm planning problems using the three different planning algorithms. This comparative analysis provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of each sampling strategy. Results indicate that the kinematic-based passive chains swapping strategy is more preferable in environments with obstacles but harder to implement for various robotic arms.