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The complexity of planar compliant motion planning under uncertainty

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Abstract

We consider the computational complexity of planning compliant motions in the plane, given geometric bounds on the uncertainty in sensing and control. We can give efficient algorithms for generating and verifying compliant motion strategies that are guaranteed to succeed as long as the sensing and control uncertainties lie within the specified bounds. We also consider the case where a compliant motion plan is required to succeed over some parametric family of geometries. While these problems are known to be intractable in three dimensions, we identify tractable subclasses in the plane.

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Communicated by C. K. Wong.

This report describes research done at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Support for the Laboratory's Artificial Intelligence research is provided in part by the Office of Naval Research under Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-81-K-0494 and in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency under Office of Naval Research Contracts N00014-85-K-0124 and N00014-82-K.-0334. The author was funded in part by a NASA fellowship administered by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and in part by the Mathematical Sciences Institute and the National Science Foundation.

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Donald, B.R. The complexity of planar compliant motion planning under uncertainty. Algorithmica 5, 353–382 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01840394

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01840394

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