Clearance-based homotopic optimal path computation

摘要

Navigation and path planning have applications in robotics, marine security, oil and gas exploration and production, and geographical information systems domain. One of the problems often faced in such complex environments is to find an optimal path, as defined both by its length and by its clearance from obstacles. Many path planning techniques such as the roadmap method, the cell decomposition method, and the potential field method generate low quality paths with redundant motions, which are later processed to generate high quality approximations of the homotopic optimal path. In this article, we present an improved geometric algorithm to homotopically optimize a path between a source and a destination in a plane based on a preset clearance from obstacles and overall length. Application of our presented method in planning directional petroleum well drilling paths utilizing Voronoi diagram concludes this article.