Global path planning approach based on ant colony optimization algorithm

Ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm was modified to optimize the global path. In order to simulate the real ant colonies, according to the foraging behavior of ant colonies and the characteristic of food, conceptions of neighboring area and smell area were presented. The former can ensure the diversity of paths and the latter ensures that each ant can reach the goal. Then the whole path was divided into three parts and ACO was used to search the second part path. When the three parts pathes were adjusted, the final path was found. The valid path and invalid path were defined to ensure the path valid. Finally, the strategies of the pheromone search were applied to search the optimum path. However, when only the pheromone was used to search the optimum path, ACO converges easily. In order to avoid this premature convergence, combining pheromone search and random search, a hybrid ant colony algorithm(HACO) was used to find the optimum path. The comparison between ACO and HACO shows that HACO can be used to find the shortest path.

Neural network and genetic algorithm based global path planning in a static environment

Mobile robot global path planning in a static environment is an important problem. The paper proposes a method of global path planning based on neural network and genetic algorithm. We constructed the neural network model of environmental information in the workspace for a robot and used this model to establish the relationship between a collision avoidance path and the output of the model. Then the two-dimensional coding for the path via-points was converted to one-dimensional one and the fitness of both the collision avoidance path and the shortest distance are integrated into a fitness function. The simulation results showed that the proposed method is correct and effective.

Heuristic Expanding Disconnected Graph:A Rapid Path Planning Method for Mobile Robots

Existing mobile robots mostly use graph search algorithms for path planning,which suffer from relatively low planning efficiency owing to high redundancy and large computational complexity.Due to the limitations of the neighborhood search strategy,the robots could hardly obtain the most optimal global path.A global path planning algorithm,denoted as EDG*,is proposed by expanding nodes using a well-designed expanding disconnected graph operator(EDG)in this paper.Firstly,all obstacles are marked and their corners are located through the map pre-processing.Then,the EDG operator is designed to find points in non-obstruction areas to complete the rapid expansion of disconnected nodes.Finally,the EDG*heuristic iterative algorithm is proposed.It selects the candidate node through a specific valuation function and realizes the node expansion while avoiding collision with a minimum offset.Path planning experiments were conducted in a typical indoor environment and on the public dataset CSM.The result shows that the proposed EDG*reduced the planning time by more than 90%and total length of paths reduced by more than 4.6%.Compared to A*,Dijkstra and JPS,EDG*does not show an exponential explosion effect in map size.The EDG*showed better performance in terms of path smoothness,and collision avoidance.This shows that the EDG*algorithm proposed in this paper can improve the efficiency of path planning and enhance path quality.

Research on AGV task path planning based on improved A^(*) algorithm

Background Automatic guided vehicles(AGVs)have developed rapidly in recent years and have been used in several fields,including intelligent transportation,cargo assembly,military testing,and others.A key issue in these applications is path planning.Global path planning results based on known environmental information are used as the ideal path for AGVs combined with local path planning to achieve safe and rapid arrival at the destination.Using the global planning method,the ideal path should meet the requirements of as few turns as possible,a short planning time,and continuous path curvature.Methods We propose a global path-planning method based on an improved A^(*)algorithm.The robustness of the algorithm was verified by simulation experiments in typical multiobstacle and indoor scenarios.To improve the efficiency of the path-finding time,we increase the heuristic information weight of the target location and avoid invalid cost calculations of the obstacle areas in the dynamic programming process.Subsequently,the optimality of the number of turns in the path is ensured based on the turning node backtracking optimization method.Because the final global path needs to satisfy the AGV kinematic constraints and curvature continuity condition,we adopt a curve smoothing scheme and select the optimal result that meets the constraints.Conclusions Simulation results show that the improved algorithm proposed in this study outperforms the traditional method and can help AGVs improve the efficiency of task execution by planning a path with low complexity and smoothness.Additionally,this scheme provides a new solution for global path planning of unmanned vehicles.

Intermediary RRT*-PSO:A Multi-Directional Hybrid Fast Convergence Sampling-Based Path Planning Algorithm

Path planning is a prevalent process that helps mobile robots find the most efficient pathway from the starting position to the goal position to avoid collisions with obstacles.In this paper,we propose a novel path planning algorithm-Intermediary RRT*-PSO-by utilizing the exploring speed advantages of Rapidly exploring Random Trees and using its solution to feed to a metaheuristic-based optimizer,Particle swarm optimization(PSO),for fine-tuning and enhancement.In Phase 1,the start and goal trees are initialized at the starting and goal positions,respectively,and the intermediary tree is initialized at a random unexplored region of the search space.The trees were grown until one met the other and then merged and re-initialized in other unexplored regions.If the start and goal trees merge,the first solution is found and passed through a minimization process to reduce unnecessary nodes.Phase 2 begins by feeding the minimized solution from Phase 1 as the global best particle of PSO to optimize the path.After simulating two special benchmark configurations and six practice configurations with special cases,the results of the study concluded that the proposed method is capable of handling small to large,simple to complex continuous environments,whereas it was very tedious for the previous method to achieve.

A global path planning algorithm based on the feature map

The feature map is a characteristic of high computational efficiency,but it is seldom used in path planning due to its lack of expression of environmental details.To solve this problem,a global path planning algorithm based on the feature map is proposed based on the directionality of line segment features.First,the robot searches the path along the direction of the target position but turns to search in the direction parallel to the obstacle,which it approaches until the line between the robot and the target position does not intersect with obstacles.Then it turns to the target position,keep searching the path.Meanwhile,the problems of the direction selection of turning point,corner point and obstacle circumvention in the searching process are analysed and corresponding solutions are put forth.Finally,a path optimisation algorithm with variable parameters is proposed,making the optimised path shorter and smoother.Simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is superior to A*algorithm in terms of computation time and path length,especially of the computation efficiency.

Global optimal path planning for mobile robot based onimproved Dijkstra algorithm and ant system algorithm

A novel method of global optimal path planning for mobile robot was proposed based on the improved Dijkstra algorithm and ant system algorithm. This method includes three steps: the first step is adopting the MAKLINK graph theory to establish the free space model of the mobile robot, the second step is adopting the improved Dijkstra algorithm to find out a sub-optimal collision-free path, and the third step is using the ant system algorithm to adjust and optimize the location of the sub-optimal path so as to generate the global optimal path for the mobile robot. The computer simulation experiment was carried out and the results show that this method is correct and effective. The comparison of the results confirms that the proposed method is better than the hybrid genetic algorithm in the global optimal path planning.

Brain Cognition Mechanism-Inspired Hierarchical Navigation Method for Mobile Robots

Autonomous navigation is a fundamental problem in robotics.Traditional methods generally build point cloud map or dense feature map in perceptual space;due to lack of cognition and memory formation mechanism,traditional methods exist poor robustness and low cognitive ability.As a new navigation technology that draws inspiration from mammal’s navigation,bionic navigation method can map perceptual information into cognitive space,and have strong autonomy and environment adaptability.To improve the robot’s autonomous navigation ability,this paper proposes a cognitive map-based hierarchical navigation method.First,the mammals’navigation-related grid cells and head direction cells are modeled to provide the robots with location cognition.And then a global path planning strategy based on cognitive map is proposed,which can anticipate one preferred global path to the target with high efficiency and short distance.Moreover,a hierarchical motion controlling method is proposed,with which the target navigation can be divided into several sub-target navigation,and the mobile robot can reach to these sub-targets with high confidence level.Finally,some experiments are implemented,the results show that the proposed path planning method can avoid passing through obstacles and obtain one preferred global path to the target with high efficiency,and the time cost does not increase extremely with the increase of experience nodes number.The motion controlling results show that the mobile robot can arrive at the target successfully only depending on its self-motion information,which is an effective attempt and reflects strong bionic properties.