Abstract: Facing the problem that the middle forked point is difficult to determine which exists in the
branch cable routing, a branch cable automatic routing method is proposed based on co-evolutionary
algorithm. Firstly, the branch cable harness model is established. The approach divides the whole
system of branch cable into a few single cables based on the cable harness model, and every single
cable represents a population. Improved RRT (rapidly-exploring random trees, RRT) algorithm is
used to obtain initial path of every single cable. Then middle forked points is optimized based on the
idea of co-evolution, which is affected by other single cables during its evolution, and the branch
cable routing optimized obtained. Finally, the final optimization of path points obtained were fitted to
obtain the cable as a result. A 3D automatic routing prototype system is developed and some
experiments are applied to verify the efficiency of the method.

Key words: branch cable, automatic routing, co-evolutionary algorithm, rapidly-exploring random
tree algorithm