Motion Planning for Mobile Manipulators Based on an Improved A* Algorithm and Manipulability
Cao Yi
Zhu Boyu
Gu Chao
Zhao Zhihua
Guo Yinhui
Abstract：To address the problems of long planning time and poor operability of pick-and-place(PAP)movement of a mobile manipulator in an indoor environment,an enhanced regular A* algorithm was proposed to determine the optimal docking position and perform system motion planning,using manipulator operability as the evaluation criterion.Firstly,on the basis of conventional A* algorithm,eight search directions were simpli-fied to five to improve the search efficiency.At the same time,a new heuristic search function was designed,and Floyd algorithm was introduced into the A* algorithm to increase the smoothness of the path.The simulation re-sults show that the running time of the improved A* algorithm is shortened by 59.1%,the path length was re-duced by 3.5%,and the number of search nodes is reduced by 41.6%.Secondly,according to the reachable workspace and Jacobian matrix of the manipulator,the maneuverability of the mobile manipulator in different po-sitions near the target object to be PAP was evaluated,and the docking position was optimized to improve the maneuverability of the PAP movement.Finally,a mobile manipulator system consisting of a DIY six-degree-of-freedom(DOF)manipulator and Turtlebot2 mobile platform was employed to conduct comprehensive motion planning experiments in indoor environment,which verifies the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method.
Keywords：Mobile manipulatorImproved A* algorithmOptimal parking positionRobotic arm oper-able degree valueObstacle-free motion planning
Publication Date：2024-11-15
Online Publishing Date：2026-09-12(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：8( 55-62 )