Catenary Visibility: A Geometric Framework for Planning with Tethered Robots

Abstract

This paper introduces \emph{catenary visibility}, a new geometric visibility concept for a robotic system consisting of a ground robot tethered to an aerial drone. The tether is modeled as an extensible catenary curve with bounded length, providing sustained power and significantly extending operational range. We define a point on the ground plane as \emph{catenary-visible} from a target point in 3D if there exists a collision-free catenary connecting them, given a set of obstacles. This paper introduces a geometric framework for visibility-aware planning of a tethered marsupial system, addressing the computational challenge of determining the feasible deployment locus: the collection of points in the ground plane that are catenary-visible from a given target in 3D space. We begin by solving the 2D subproblem, where the obstacles, target, and the ground vehicle's line of motion are all constrained to a single vertical plane. Our algorithm for this case computes the complete set of feasible launch points along the motion line and simultaneously determines the range of viable cable lengths for each. We also consider the query problem of finding all collision-free length ranges for a given location of the ground robot. Building upon this planar solution, we then generalize the approach to three dimensions, deriving a 3D solution for a constrained class of obstacles.