Abstract:
This paper presents a one step smooth and efficient
path planning algorithm for navigating a large robotic platform
in known cluttered environments. The proposed strategy, based
on the generation of a novel search space, relies on non-uniform
density sampling of the free areas to direct the computational
resources to troubled and difficult regions, such as narrow
passages, leaving the larger open spaces sparsely populated. A
smoothing penalty is also associated to the nodes to encourage the
generation of gentle paths along the middle of the empty spaces.
Collision detection is carried out off-line during the creation of
the configuration space to speed up the actual search for the path,
which is done on-line. Results prove that the proposed approach
considerably reduces the search space in a meaningful and
practical manner, improving the computational cost of generating
a path optimised for fine and smooth motion.
