Optimal robust path planning in general environments

Journal Article · Wed Dec 01 04:00:00 EST 1993 · IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/70.265921· OSTI ID:5076774

Hu, T C ^[1]; Kahng, A B ^[2]; Robins, G ^[3]

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1. Univ. of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA (United States). Computer Science and Engineering Dept.
2. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States). Computer Science Dept.
3. Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA (United States). Dept. of Computer Science

The authors address robust path planning for a mobile agent in a general environment by finding minimum cost source-destination paths having prescribed widths. The main result is a new approach that optimally solves the robust path planning problem using an efficient network flow formulation. Their algorithm represents a significant departure from conventional shortest-path or graph search based methods; it not only handles environments with solid polygonal obstacles, but also generalizes to arbitrary cost maps that may arise in modeling incomplete or uncertain knowledge of the environment. Simple extensions allow them to address higher dimensional problems instances and minimum-surface computations; the latter is a result of independent interest. They use an efficient implementation to exhibit optimal path-planning solutions for a variety of test problems. The paper concludes with open issues and directions for future work.

• OSTI ID: 5076774
• Journal Information: IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States), Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers); (United States) Vol. 9:6; ISSN 1042-296X; ISSN IRAUEZ
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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