Planning Near Optimal Corridors

Using Corridors for Motion Planning

 Abstract

 The motion-planning problem, involving the computation of a collision-free path for a moving entity amidst obstacles, is a central problem in fields like Robotics and Game Design. In this project we study the problem of planning high-quality paths.

 A high-quality path should have some desirable properties: it should be short, avoiding long detours - and at the same time it should stay at a safe distance from the obstacles, namely it should have clearance.

 We suggest a quality measure for paths, which balances between the above criteria of minimizing the path length while maximizing its clearance. We analyze the properties of optimal paths according to our measure, and devise an approximation algorithm to compute near-optimal paths amidst polygonal obstacles in the plane.

 We also apply our quality measure to corridors. Instead of planning a one-dimensional motion path for moving entity, it is often more convenient to let the entity move in a corridor, where the exact motion path is determined by a local planner. We show that planning an optimal corridor is equivalent to planning an optimal path with bounded clearance.

Illustrations

Example of a Bounded Voronoi Diagram	Polygonal Obstacles	Example of a Bounded Voronoi Diagram for Polygons

Links

• Ron Wein, Jur van den Berg and Dan Halperin
  Planning High-Quality Paths and Corridors amidst Obstacles
  International Journal on Robotics Research, Selected Contributions of the Seventh International Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR),  27: 1213-1231, 2008 [link] [bibtex]

• Ron Wein, Jur van den Berg and Dan Halperin
  Planning High-Quality Paths and Corridors Amidst Obstacles
  Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics VII, pages 491-506, 2008 [link] [bibtex]
• Ron Wein's presentation
  Planning Near-Optimal Corridors Amidst Obstacles
  Presented at the ACS meeting, Athens, May 2006 [ppt]
• Ron Wein
  The Integration of Exact Arrangements with Effective Motion Planning
  PhD Thesis, Tel Aviv University, March 2007 [pdf] [bibtex]
  
• Jur van den Berg
  Path Planning in Dynamic Environments.
  PhD Thesis, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 2007.
  
  

Contact

Ron Wein
Dan Halperin