Motion planning dialog

WARNING: Since V-REP release 3.3.0, a plugin wrapping the OMPL library is available. It is highly recommended to use the path planning API functions offered by that plugin, instead of using this old built-in path/motion planning functionality, since the plugin/OMPL approach is much more flexible and scalable. The following documentation is deprecated.

The motion planning dialog is part of the calculation module properties dialog, which is located at [Menu bar --> Tools --> Calculation module properties]. You can also open the dialog with a click on its toolbar button:

[Calculation module properties toolbar button]


In the calculation module properties dialog, click the Motion planning button to display the motion planning dialog:

[Motion planning dialog]


  • Add new object: adds a new motion planning object. Make sure that all active joints part of the manipulator are selected.
  • Associated IK group: the IK group that performs inverse kinematics for the manipulator. The IK group needs to be correctly defined and valid. It should be set to explicit handling.
  • Self-collision check: allows to specify two entities that should not be colliding during the self-collision check (i.e. during a path search). Usually, a same collection is specified as entity 1 and entity 2 to check that collection for self-collision. See also the item Collection self-collision indicator in the object common properties.
  • Robot-obstacles collision check: allows to specify two entities that should not be colliding during the robot-obstacles collision check (i.e. during a path search).
  • Edit joint properties: opens a dialog that allows to adjust various properties for each joint:
  • [Motion planning joint parameter dialog]

  • Range subdivisions: the number of subdivisions for phase 1 node generation. Generally, a higher number produces better results, but uses more memory and might also be slower. The total number of phase 1 nodes can be calculated as follows: (joint1RangeSubdivision+1)*(joint2RangeSubdivision+1)*(joint3RangeSubdivision+1)*...
  • Metric weight: value that is used to calculate a distance between two nodes in the configuration space. Joints near the robot base should usually have higher values than joints near the robot tip.

  • Edit Cartesian space metric: opens a dialog that allows to adjust the Cartesian space metric, which represents a way to measure a distance between two transformations in space (i.e. position and orientation). This is used to help determine what configuration nodes might be good candidates for a given end-effector position/orientation.
  • [Cartesian space metric dialog]

  • Compute phase 1 nodes: computes or re-computes the phase 1 nodes. This calculation might also be automatically triggered when a motion planning API function is called for the first time on this motion planning task.
  • Visualize phase 1 nodes: visualizes in green all the calculated phase 1 nodes. Each node represents a single point.

  • Recommended topics

  • Motion planning