Anytime RRT based cable automatic routing under three-dimensional environment

Constraint based path planning plays an important role in cable layout design (CLD) problem. Currently the constraints like physical ones are not well taken into account in cable routing with low efficiency under three-dimensional environment. An anytime RRT based method for cable automatic routing is presented. The method first computes an initial path from the start point to the goal point using combined anytime algorithm and bidirectional attractive rapidly-exploring random trees (RRT) algorithm, which can solve both length constraint and searching efficiency. To refine the initial path, it is pulled to the structure surface by performing the proposed obstacle based magnetic attraction (OBMA) algorithm. Finally the Cosserat elastic rod theory is used for the physical properties modeling of cable to generate the accurate pose of all the fixed cables. Several typical situations are selected to test the performance of the algorithm and we also test the effect by implementing our method on an electrical product with the cable routing system.