A Reasonable Path Planning via Path Energy Minimization

This paper presents a path planning method by path energy minimizing that enables mobile robots to move smoothly in the real world with optimizing path shape for shortest distance or minimum curvature. It also enables robots to travel safely toward a destination because pedestrian motion prediction is embedded in path planning. This path planning method is based on problems experienced in a robot competition called Tsukuba Challenge. The problems involved nonsmooth motion arising from finite path patterns in A* algorithm, stuck motion arising from frequently path switching, and near misses arising from nonpredictive planning. Our path planning method minimizes path-shape energy defined as the connection between path points. Minimizing energy provides smooth paths and avoids path switching. We propose a path planning method with prediction of dynamic obstacle motion embedded to avoid near misses. Experimental results showed improvements in solving these problems.