A SHORTEST-PATH ALGORITHM FOR A CARLIKE ROBOT IN A POLYGONAL ENVIRONMENT

This paper addresses the problem of finding a shortest collision-free path for a carlike point robot maneuvering around polygonal obstacles in a room bounded by a polygonal line. The authors introduce a suffici ent set of 56 subpath types for the no-obstacle case in which a subpat h is defined as a piece of a path that starts and ends at either the i nitial position, the final position, or anp position on a cell boundar y. The authors propose a near-optimal algorithm that consists of findi ng a shortest path in a search graph where the arcs represent subpaths whose types belong to the sufficient set. The authors then study an a lgorithm in which the robot is allowed to rum on the spot at a certain cast. Finally, the authors compare the solutions derived from both al gorithms.