We apply manipulation planning to computer animation. A new path planner is presented that automatically computes the collision-free trajectories for several cooperating arms to manipulate a movable object between two configurations. This implemented planner is capable of dealing with complicated tasks where regrasping is involved. In addition, we present a new inverse kinematics algorithm for the human arms. This algorithm is utilized by the planner for the generation of realistic human arm motions as they manipulate objects. We view our system as a tool for facilitating the production of animation.

A general and efficient method is presented that uses a configuration space for planning a collision-free path among known stationary obstacles for an arbitrarily moving object with six degrees of freedom. The basic approach is to restrict the free space concerning path planning and to avoid executing unnecessary collision detections. The six-dimensional configuration space is equally quantized into cells by placing a regular grid, and the cells concerning path planning are enumerated by simultaneously executing multiple search strategies. Search strategies of different characteristics are defined by assigning different values to the coefficients of heuristic functions. The efficiency of each search strategy is evaluated during free-space enumeration, and a more promising one is automatically selected and preferentially executed. The free-space cells are efficiently enumerated for an arbitrary moving object in all kinds of working environments. The implementation of this method on several examples that have different characteristics is discussed.>