A Shortest Path Planning Algorithm for Mobile Robots Using a Modified Visibility Graph Method

This paper presents a global path planning algorithm based on a visibility graph method, and applies additionally various constraints for constructing the reduced visibility graph. The modification algorithm for generating the rounded path is applied to the globally shortest path of the visibility graph using the robot size constraint in order to avoid the obstacle. In order to check the visibility in given 3D map data, 3D CAD data with VRML format is projected to the 2D plane of the mobile robot, and the projected map is converted into an image for easy map analysis. The image processing are applied to this grid map for extracting the obstacles and the free space. Generally, the tree size of visibility graph is proportional to the factorial of the number of the corner points. In order to reduce the tree size and search the shortest path efficiently, the various constraints are proposed. After short paths that crosses the corner points of obstacles lists up, the shortest path among these paths is selected and it is modified to the combination of the line path and the arc path for the mobile robot to avoid the obstacles and follow the rounded path in the environment. The proposed path planning algorithm is applied to the mobile robot LCAR-III.