Recent News
Computer science student chosen for Churchill Scholarship
January 11, 2023
Leaving a legacy: Computer science professor’s research honored with Test of Time Award
December 9, 2022
Virtual workshop on climate-driven extreme events planned Nov. 10
October 25, 2022
MathWorks gives $2 million to UNM to create endowed chair for Department of Computer Science
October 18, 2022
News Archives
Motion Planning for a Class of Planar Closed-Chain Manipulators
March 23, 2006
- Date: Thursday, March 23, 2006
- Time: 11:00 am — 12:15 pm
- Place: Woodward 149
Guanfeng Liu (UNM Faculty Candidate)
Department of Computer Science, Stanford University
We study the motion planning problem for planar star-shaped manipulators. These manipulators are formed by joining k“legs” to a common point (like the thorax of an insect) and then fixing the “feet” to the ground. The result is a planar parallel manipulator with k-1 independent closed loops. A topological analysis is used to understand the global structure of the configuration space so that planning problem can be solved exactly. The worst-case complexity of our algorithm is O(k3N3), where N is the maximum number of links in a leg. Several examples illustrating our method are given. Finally we show the application of our topological method in the study of the global structure of protein conformation space.