DVG plus A* and RRT Path-Planners: A Comparison in a Highly Dynamic Environment

This work provides a deeper comparison between two path planning algorithms, the Dynamic Visibility Graph A Star (DVG+A*) and Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT), when applied in a high dimension and dynamic environment, which is the RoboCup Small Size League. The algorithms were compared under two different perspectives. In the first analysis, the algorithms were evaluated according to its computational time, path length and path safety in a static environment. Afterwards, they were evaluated regarding the accumulated computational time, number of recalculated paths, total navigation time and number of collisions in a dynamic environment. The static environment results have shown that the DVG+A* has a better overall performance than RRT, except for the path safety, however, some ideas on how to improve this were discussed. In the dynamic environment the algorithms performed similarly and with a high number of collisions during the experiments. Thus, showing the importance of using an obstacle avoidance algorithm combined with the path planner. In conclusion, the results obtained showed that both algorithms aren't suitable for highly dynamic and cluttered environments, however, due how sparse the obstacles are in the SSL, they can still be used with some care. Regarding static environments, the DVG+A* has shown the best results.