Adaptive Evolutionary Planner/Navigator for Mobile Robots

Based on evolutionary computation (EC) concepts, we developed an adaptive Evolutionary Planner/Navigator (EP/N) as a novel approach to path planning and navigation. The EP/N is characterized by generality, flexibility, and adaptability. It unifies off-line planning and on-line planning/navigation processes in the same general and flexible evolutionary algorithm which (1) accommodates different optimization criteria and changes in these criteria, (2) incorporates various types of problem-specific domain knowledge, (3) enables good trade-offs among near-optimality of paths, high planning efficiency, and effective handling of unknown obstacles. More importantly, the EP/N can selftune its performance for different task environments and changes in such environments, mostly through adapting probabilities of its operators and adjusting paths constantly even during a robot's motion towards the goal