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A configuration-space obstacle is a set of robot configurations whose occupied geometry intersects an obstacle. It translates a collision question about an extended robot into an excluded region of configuration space. The excluded coordinates can include rotation and joint angles as well as position. Hauser's primary planning formulation describes feasibility using the robot's occupied workspace set at each configuration.^[ref]

For an original fixed-orientation translation model, let $R$ be the robot's shape relative to its reference point, $O$ the physical obstacle and $q$ the reference-point translation. Collision meansThis is equivalent to $q+r=o$ for some $r\in R$, $o\in O$, and thereforeThe Minkowski sum must use the reflected robot shape. When $R$ is symmetric about its reference point, reflection leaves it unchanged; for an asymmetric reference choice, omitting the minus sign changes the collision region.

A one-dimensional example makes the reflection visible. Let a robot occupy $R=[0,0.30]$ metres relative to its left endpoint, and let the obstacle be the point $O=\{1\}$ metre. The forbidden reference positions are $[0.70,1.00]$ metres. At $q=0.80$, the robot spans $[0.80,1.10]$ and hits the obstacle. Using $O\oplus R=[1.00,1.30]$ would wrongly miss this collision and exclude some clear positions.

For a centered circular footprint of radius $r$ and a circular obstacle of radius $a$, the forbidden center positions form a disk of radius $a+r$. For axis-aligned rectangular shapes, each obstacle side expands by the robot's corresponding half-width. These are exact reductions for the stated geometry and fixed orientation.

An orientation-dependent configuration-space obstacle instead has a different translation-space cross-section for each orientation. A thin centered rod of length $0.40\mathrm{m}$ collides with a radius-$0.03\mathrm{m}$ obstacle centered at $(0.18,0)$ when the rod lies along the horizontal axis. At the same center position, a vertical rod is clear. The shared center point cannot encode the difference without the orientation coordinate.

For closed occupied sets, touching belongs to the forbidden set under this definition; a required clearance margin can enlarge it further. A proposed geometric check places the modeled robot at selected boundary configurations, compares the predicted intersections with measured geometry, and then verifies the path between them. Testing a few clear endpoint configurations alone does not establish a collision-free continuous motion.

An orientation-dependent configuration-space obstacle is the forbidden set for an extended robot whose occupied geometry changes with its orientation. For a planar rigid shape $B$ referred to a body-fixed point, translation $t\in {\mathbb{R}}^2$ and rotation matrix $R_{\theta }$, the occupied set is $t+R_{\theta }B$. With obstacle set $O$, collision meansFor each fixed angle, the forbidden translations are thereforeIndeed, an intersection gives $t+R_{\theta }b=o$, hence $t=o-R_{\theta }b$, and the converse follows by substitution. This is a reflected Minkowski sum, not an unreflected sum of the two shapes. Hauser develops these angle-indexed slices explicitly for a translating and rotating polygon.^[ref]

The full configuration-space obstacle is $\{(t,\theta ):t\in C_{\theta }\}$. Its angular coordinate is periodic: orientations zero and $2\pi$ represent the same rotation. Translation and orientation cannot generally be replaced by one planar obstacle inflation. A circular robot centered at its reference point is a special case, because rotating that shape leaves every $C_{\theta }$ unchanged.

An original doorway example uses a rectangle with half-length $a=0.30\mathrm{m}$ and half-width $b=0.10\mathrm{m}$, centered in an infinitely long horizontal corridor of width $W=0.25\mathrm{m}$. Its vertical half-extent at angle $\theta$ isWith contact counted as collision, a centered placement is clear only if $h(\theta )<W/2$. At zero angle the total width is $0.20\mathrm{m}$, leaving $25\mathrm{mm}$ at each wall. At $10^{\circ }$, the total width is about $0.3012\mathrm{m}$, so the same center position collides. For small positive angles, the first touching angle solves $0.30\sin \theta +0.10\cos \theta =0.125$, giving approximately $4.85^{\circ }$. A collision-free center path alone would miss this rotational restriction.

Angular sampling needs a bound on the geometry between checked orientations. If every body point lies within radius $\rho$ of the reference point, changing orientation by $\Delta \theta$ moves each corresponding point by at mostThe first expression is the chord length; the inequality follows from $\sin u\le u$. An angular clearance bound for a rotating body uses this motion allowance to transfer a measured separation to nearby orientations. For the rectangle above, $\rho =\sqrt{a^2+b^2}\approx 0.3162\mathrm{m}$. A ten-degree grid has a five-degree worst-case distance to a sampled orientation, allowing about $27.6\mathrm{mm}$ of point motion. A sampled $20\mathrm{mm}$ gap would not certify every intermediate orientation under that bound.

A geometric validation can place a rectangular test piece at predicted near-touching angles in a measured corridor, accounting for reference-point offsets and wall tolerances. A planner must also check the continuous motions connecting clear configurations; clear grid vertices alone do not establish clear connecting rotations. A conservative enclosing disk may simplify that check, at the cost of excluding some feasible narrow passages.