Collision-Free and Curvature-Continuous Path Smoothing In Cluttered Environments

We present a novel trajectory computation algorithm to smoothen jerky collision-free paths computed by samplebased motion planners. Our approach uses cubic B-splines to generate G2 or curvature continuous trajectories. The algorithm performs local spline refinement to compute collision-free trajectories in narrow passages and satisfies velocity and acceleration constraints. We also present a fast and reliable algorithm for collision checking between robot and the environment along the B-spline trajectories. We highlight the performance of our algorithm on complex benchmarks, including path computation for rigid and articulated models in tight spaces and narrow passages.