Method rapidly verifies that a robot will avoid collisions

Faster and more accurate than some alternatives, this approach could be useful for robots that interact with humans or work in tight spaces. Before a robot can grab dishes off a shelf to set the table, it must ensure its gripper and arm won't crash into anything and potentially shatter the fine china. As part of its motion planning process, a robot typically runs "safety check" algorithms that verify its trajectory is collision-free. However, sometimes these algorithms generate false positives, claiming a trajectory is safe when the robot would actually collide with something. Other methods that can avoid false positives are typically too slow for robots in the real world. Now, MIT researchers have developed a safety check technique which can prove with 100 percent accuracy that a robot's trajectory will remain collision-free (assuming the model of the robot and environment is itself accurate). Their method, which is so precise it can discriminate between trajectories that differ by only millimeters, provides proof in only a few seconds.