Robotic Path Planning

Planning can be used in a variety of applications. In this paper we will discuss those planning techniques that ^PPly to the task of robotic path planning- Here a planner is used to generate "paths " which a robot can follow to maneuver from some point A to another point B, while at the same time avoiding all obstacles. All approaches discussed in this paper are based on viewing the robot as a sphere. By assuming this, the need to consider the robot ' s orientation as it moves along a proposed path is eliminated. Another requirement is that not only must a successful path be found, but this path should also be the shortest path through the space. Since "finding the shortest path between two points that avoids a collection of poly-hedral obstacles in three dimensions is already computationally intractable " [ 1] and 3-D robotic vision may not be available, the discussion in this paper will be restricted to a 2D plane (this infers that the robot's terrain is a flat hard surface). Object recognition will also not be considered, only the ability to determine that there is some object present (whether it ' s a table, chair or T.V. doesn't matter). It's length and width must be known or determined. The height of the object is not important as the robot will go around the Robotic Path Plannin