Collision-free trajectory planning for robotic assembly of lightweight structures

This research presents a trajectory planning approach for robotic assembly of lightweight structures for COVID-19 healthcare facilities. The prefabricated building components of COVID-19 healthcare facilities have nonnegligible volume, where the crux of the scientific question lies in how to incorporate geometry-based collision checks in trajectory planning. This research developed an algorithm that refines the RRT* (Rapidly-exploring Random Tree-Star) algorithm to enable the detour of a planned trajectory based on the geometry of prefabricated components to prevent collisions. Testing of the approach reveals that it has satisfactory collision-avoiding and trajectory-smoothing performance, and is time- and labour-saving compared with the traditional human method. The satisfactory results highlight the practical implication of this research, where robots can replace human labour and contribute to the mitigation of COVID-19 spread on construction sites. The subsequent research will investigate the use of a collaborative robot to screw bolt connections after the components are assembled at locations.