Copyright © 2015 RoboDK Global
The biggest difference between both the motion planners is how much preparation work has to be done before the robot moves.
The PRM planner is a tool that works like building a permanent road network. It first runs a "construction phase", where several minutes are spent in randomly placing points and trying to connect them into a giant roadmap. Once that map is finished, finding a path is instant because the "roads" are already built. However, if you move even one table or box or any other object in the station, the entire map is useless and you have to rebuild it from scratch.
Smart Motion is built to be much more flexible. There is no slow map-building step. It looks at exactly where the robot is and where it needs to go, then finds a safe "tunnel" through the obstacles. It is a one-step process: pick the points (targets), click generate, and it moves. If you move an object in your cell, just click Generate Path again without waiting for a new map.
