ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the problem of path planning for a thin elastic plate. The underlying geometric model for the plate is provided by a Bezier representa tion. The geometric model is augmented by a realistic mechanical model. The latter permits the computation of the shape of the plate with respect to a set of grasp ing constraints by minimizing the elastic energy of the deformation. We use a probabilistic roadmap planner to compute paths for the plate and we present a num ber of experimental results to illustrate our approach. Our work is a first step towards considering the physi cal properties of objects when planning.
