Motion planning in crowded planar environments

Abstract

We present a new algorithm for fine motion planning in geometrically complex situations. Geometrically complex situations have complex robot and environment geometry, crowded environments, narrow passages and tight fits. They require complex robot motions with coupled degrees of freedom. The algorithm constructs a path by incrementally building a graph of linearized convex configuration space cells and solving a series of linear optimization problems with varying objective functions. Its advantages are that it better exploits the local geometry of narrow passages in configuration space, and that its complexity does not significantly increase as the clearance of narrow passages decreases. We demonstrate the algorithm on examples which other planners could not solve.