Robot path planning with distance-safety criterion

A method for determining an optimal path with a weighted distance-safety criterion is developed. The goal is to strike a compromise between the shortest path and the centerline path, which is safer. The method is composed of three parts: (i) construction of a region map by dividing the workspace, (ii) interregion optimization to determine the entry and departure points of the path in each region, and (iii) intraregion optimization for determining the (optimal) path segment within each region. The region map is generated by using an approximate Voronoi diagram, and region optimization is achieved using variational dynamic programming. Although developed for 2-D problems, the method can be easily extended to a class of 3-D problems. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the method.