Optimal Robot Path Planning With Cellular Neural Network

In this paper , a Novel Cellular Neural Network (CNN) entitled the shortest path CNN (SP-CNN) is proposed. It has a good performance in path planning for mobile robots because of its network structure and neural dynamics. The proposed method not only can generate the best solution in static environments in real time but also generate the optional solution in dynamic environments or in unknown environments according to its currently acquired navigation map. Extensive simulations about the above mentioned aspects demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

This paper deals with a new approach based on Q-learning for solving the problem of mobile robot path planning in complex unknown static environments. As a computational approach to learning through interaction with the environment, reinforcement learning algorithms have been widely used for intelligent robot control, especially in the field of autonomous mobile robots. However, the learning process is slow and cumbersome. For practical applications, rapid rates of convergence are required. Aiming at the problem of slow convergence and long learning time for Q-learning based mobile robot path planning, a state-chain sequential feedback Q-learning algorithm is proposed for quickly searching for the optimal path of mobile robots in complex unknown static environments. The state chain is built during the searching process. After one action is chosen and the reward is received, the Q-values of the state-action pairs on the previously built state chain are sequentially updated with one-step Q-learning. With the increasing number of Q-values updated after one action, the number of actual steps for convergence decreases and thus, the learning time decreases, where a step is a state transition. Extensive simulations validate the efficiency of the newly proposed approach for mobile robot path planning in complex environments. The results show that the new approach has a high convergence speed and that the robot can find the collision-free optimal path in complex unknown static environments with much shorter time, compared with the one-step Q-learning algorithm and the Q(λ)-learning algorithm.

This article focuses on achieving efficient and safe navigation for robots in dynamic and unpredictable environments. We propose a hierarchical path planning framework that integrates global path planning with local dynamic obstacle avoidance. This framework aims to quickly plan a collision-free, shortest, and safest path for the robot while adapting the navigation path according to uncertainties in the operating environment. Global path planning is conducted using the improved gray wolf optimization algorithm (IGWO), trajectory tracking is achieved through a pure pursuit control algorithm, and a dynamic switching mechanism based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) significantly enhances the navigation performance of the robotic system. The effectiveness of this approach has been verified through simulations and experiments. Simulation results indicate that in global path planning, the IGWO algorithm achieves faster convergence compared to algorithms, such as GWO-MP and GWO-CS. The planned path lengths are reduced by approximately 4.01% and 2.27%, respectively, and the fitness values are decreased by 4.78% and 1.9%, demonstrating superior path planning performance. For local dynamic obstacle avoidance, both single-robot and multirobot systems successfully avoided obstacles in multiple experiments. Finally, physical experiments conducted in various complex scenarios show that both single-robot and multirobot systems can effectively execute global planning and respond to unexpected obstacles. These results further demonstrate the method’s wide applicability and robust performance across diverse complex environments.

In this paper, we propose a new path planning algorithm based on the probabilistic roadmaps method (PRM), in order to effectively solve the autonomous path planning of mobile robots in complex environments with multiple narrow channels. The improved PRM algorithm mainly improves the density and distribution of sampling points in the narrow channel, through a combination of the learning process of the PRM algorithm and the APF algorithm. We also shortened the required time and path length by optimizing the query process. The first key technology to improve the PRM algorithm involves optimizing the number and distribution of free points and collision-free lines in the free workspace. To ensure full visibility of the narrow channel, we extend the obstacles through the diagonal distance of the mobile robot while ignoring the safety distance. Considering the safety distance during movement, we re-classify the all sampling points obtained by the quasi-random sampling principle into three categories: free points, obstacle points, and adjacent points. Next, we transform obstacle points into the free points of the narrow channel by combining the APF algorithm and the characteristics of the narrow channel, increasing the density of sampling points in the narrow space. Then, we include potential energy judgment into the construction process of collision-free lines shortening the required time and reduce collisions with obstacles. Optimizing the query process of the PRM algorithm is the second key technology. To reduce the required time in the query process, we adapt the bidirectional A* algorithm to query these local paths and obtain an effective path to the target point. We also combine the path pruning technology with the potential energy function to obtain a short path without collisions. Finally, the experimental results demonstrate that the new PRM path planning technology can improve the density of free points in narrow spaces and achieve an optimized, collision-free path in complex environments with multiple narrow channels.

Background: Path planning technology has a wide range of applications in many fields. Applications in the field of high technology include: autonomous and touchless action of robots; obstacle avoidance and defense flight of drones; cruise missiles to avoid radar search, anti- bouncing attacks, and to complete the task of sudden defense and demolition. Applications in daily life include: GPS navigation; road planning based on GIS system; urban road network planning and navigation. Applications in the field of decision-making management include: vehicle problem (VRP) in logistics management and similar resource allocation problems in resource management. Routing problems in the field of communication technology. Any planning problem that can be topologized as a point and line network can basically be solved by the method of path planning. Different intelligent algorithms have different characteristics, and their application scope and fields are also different, so it is of great significance for the development of path planning technology to study the path planning intelligent algorithms from the characteristics of the algorithms themselves and their applications. Objective: Analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various types of planning algorithms, look forward to the future development trend of mobile robot path planning, and provide certain ideas for the research of mobile robot path planning. Methods: Search journals, patents, conferences, and papers related to mobile robot path planning, and summarize and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of various planning algorithms. Results: Based on the research results of many scholars, this study summarizes different mobile robot path planning methods. It is divided into four categories: traditional planning, intelligent search, artificial intelligence and local obstacle avoidance. This paper introduces and analyzes the latest research results of these types, including their design ideas, advantages and disadvantages, and improvement measures. The research methods adopted are analyzed in order to maximize the advantages of each algorithm and expand the application field of robot path planning to provide ideas and references. Conclusion: This paper provides guidance for the design and optimization of robot path planning. Finally, this paper summarizes the future development trend of robot path planning, and looks forward to the future development trend and key areas of robot path planning.

Path planning is an important aspect in autonomous mobile robots. Various fuzzy logic methods are conveniently employed for path planning of mobile robots as they are most helpful in handling uncertain data. In this work the robot starts from a fixed initial location towards a goal destination without colliding with obstacles in between within a shortest path possible both in static as well as dynamic environment. Here an analysis of fuzzy rules for path planning of a mobile robot for various membership funcions is done. Both simulation results and real time implementations on I Robot create platform are shown in this paper. Fuzzy tool box in Matlab is used for simulation. Three combinations of membership functions with 24 rules are considered. These include-Trapezoidal and Triangular, Bell and Trapezoidal and finally triangular and Bell. The error between the calculated value and actual value indicate that the combination of Trapezoidal and Triangular is least.

-By using the two methods of Lyapunov exponent and power spectra analysis, it is tested and verified that Chaotic phenomenon exists in time sequence of distance information that autonomous mobile robot has got from sensors between robots and obstacles. The complexity of path planning for autonomous mobile robot through sensors is explained under dynamic environments by use of chaotic phenomenon. The existence of chaotic phenomenon makes the path planning for autonomous mobile robot under dynamic environments NP-hard and also lays the foundation for revealing why navigation of autonomous mobile robot under dynamic environments is NP-hard.

Autonomous mobile robot encompasses modules such as perception, path planning, decision-making, and control. Among these modules, path planning serves as a prerequisite for mobile robots to accomplish tasks. Enhancing path planning capability of mobile robots can effectively save costs, reduce energy consumption, and improve work efficiency. The primary slime mold algorithm (SMA) exhibits characteristics such as a reduced number of parameters, strong robustness, and a relatively high level of exploratory ability. SMA performs well in path planning for mobile robots. However, it is prone to local optimization and lacks dynamic obstacle avoidance, making it less effective in real-world settings. This paper presents an enhanced SMA (ESMA) path-planning algorithm for mobile robots. The ESMA algorithm incorporates adaptive techniques to enhance global search capabilities and integrates an artificial potential field to improve dynamic obstacle avoidance. Compared to the SMA algorithm, the SMA-AGDE algorithm, which combines the Adaptive Guided Differential Evolution algorithm, and the Lévy Flight-Rotation SMA (LRSMA) algorithm, resulted in an average reduction in the minimum path length of (3.92%, 8.93%, 2.73%), along with corresponding reductions in path minimum values and processing times. Experiments show ESMA can find shortest collision-free paths for mobile robots in both static and dynamic environments.

Mobile Robot Path Planning problem (MRPPP) is the most prominent research area employed in different real-time environments. In this article, a hybrid strategy is employed and validated with different environments for the path planning of mobile robots. The Artificial Potential Field (APF) algorithm and Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) are hybridized to solve an MRPPP. In the proposed hybrid methodology, the implementation is accomplished in three phases. To generate the initial population, an Artificial Potential Field (APF) algorithm is applied to discover all viable routes in an environment between the start and destination points. The collision-free paths are generated by determining the artificial force produced by obstacles and the target. The population-based evolutionary algorithm is employed to derive an optimal solution path from the initial population consisting of candidate paths. The selection operator is used to select the qualified subpopulation to the next generation to converge into the optimal solution. The genetic operators such as two-point crossover and mid-point mutation are exercised which are specific to the path planning problem.

Mobile robots path planning: Electrostatic potential field approach

Robot navigation is challenging for mobile robots technology in environments with maps. Since finding an optimal path for the agent is complicated and time consuming, path planning in robot navigation is an axial issue. The objective of this paper is to find a reasonable relation between parameters used in the path planning algorithm in a platform which a robot will be able to move from the start point in a dynamic environment with map and plan an optimal path to specified goal without any collision with moving and static obstacles. For this purpose, an asymptotically optimal version of Rapidly-exploring Random Tree RRT algorithm, named RRT* is used. The algorithm is based on an incremental sampling which covers the whole space and acts fast. Moreover this algorithm is computationally efficient, therefore it can be used in multidimensional environments. The obtained results indicate that a feasible path for mobile holomonic robot may be found in a short time by using this algorithm. Also different standard distances measurements like (Chebyshev, Euclidean, and City Block) are examined, and coordinated with sampling node number in order to reach the suitable result based on environment circumstances.

This paper presents a modified pulse-coupled neural network (MPCNN) model for real-time collision-free path planning of mobile robots in nonstationary environments. The proposed neural network for robots is topologically organized with only local lateral connections among neurons. It works in dynamic environments and requires no prior knowledge of target or barrier movements. The target neuron fires first, and then the firing event spreads out, through the lateral connections among the neurons, like the propagation of a wave. Obstacles have no connections to their neighbors. Each neuron records its parent, that is, the neighbor that caused it to fire. The real-time optimal path is then the sequence of parents from the robot to the target. In a static case where the barriers and targets are stationary, this paper proves that the generated wave in the network spreads outward with travel times proportional to the linking strength among neurons. Thus, the generated path is always the global shortest path from the robot to the target. In addition, each neuron in the proposed model can propagate a firing event to its neighboring neuron without any comparing computations. The proposed model is applied to generate collision-free paths for a mobile robot to solve a maze-type problem, to circumvent concave U-shaped obstacles, and to track a moving target in an environment with varying obstacles. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach is demonstrated through simulation and comparison studies.

Path planning aims to enable autonomous robots to navigate safely and efficiently from a starting point to a target point in challenging and dynamic environments. Path planning in robotics is highly significant and still an ongoing subject of research. The increasing use of robots in various applications such as industrial automation, service robotics, and autonomous vehicles has brought forth the need for reliable and efficient path planning algorithms. The inherent capability of Voronoi diagrams to partition space based on proximity makes them an effective framework for research in path planning. Ant colony optimization, a bio-inspired optimization technique, is based on the foraging behavior of ants and is commonly employed to address the traveling salesman problem and various other combinatorial optimization problems. A hybrid method was adopted in this study by combining a Voronoi diagram and an ant colony algorithm. To create paths for the robot where it can stay as far away from obstacles as possible, a Voronoi diagram was utilized. Additionally, to find the shortest path from the starting point to the destination among these paths, ant colony optimization was employed. The main contribution of the study lies in the combination of the Voronoi diagram for obstacle avoidance and ant colony optimization for finding the optimal path. The combination of these techniques makes an effective contribution to robotic path planning by focusing on ensuring safety by avoiding obstacles while optimizing the shortest path. Experimental studies show that the hybrid method produces successful results for the desired purpose.

Path planning is essential for mobile robots to operate efficiently in uncertain environments. As the number of robots increases, centralised approaches struggle to provide feasible solutions within real-time constraints. To address this, an adaptive hybrid strategy-based decentralised path planning algorithm is proposed to solve the real-time path planning problem through decentralised computing. First, various path planning strategies are introduced, including a neural computing planning strategy, a dynamic search planning strategy, and a cluster coordination planning strategy. Then, an intelligent strategy selection mechanism with an adaptive strategy adjustment factor is designed, allowing each robot to dynamically select optimal planning strategies based on their current state and ensuring the planned paths exhibit greater flexibility and adaptability. Finally, the results of the ablation experiment indicate that all three strategies effectively enhance the navigation capabilities of robots in a decentralised mode. The algorithm comparison experiment demonstrates that the proposed algorithm achieves a higher task completion rate and a lower detour percentage in various environments. The decision response experiment shows that our approach has an average decision-making time of approximately 60 ms, which meets the real-time requirements for decentralised path planning of mobile robots in most scenarios.

In complex dynamic environments, robot path planning faces challenges in multi‐objective optimization, such as path length, smoothness and obstacle avoidance capability. To address this, this paper proposes an improved sparrow search algorithm based on chaotic initialization and the golden positive cosine strategy for multi‐objective path planning. Diverse initial populations are generated through chaotic mapping to enhance global search capability and avoid falling into local optima. The golden positive cosine strategy optimizes individual position updates to accelerate convergence and ensure path smoothness. Results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms sparrow search algorithm (SSA), with improvements of 21.1% in path length, 16.3% in smoothness and 14.2% in obstacle avoidance capability. After achieving global path optimization, the improved dynamic window approach (IDWA) is employed for real‐time obstacle avoidance in dynamic environments, dynamically adjusting the window size based on robot speed, obstacle density and target distance to adaptively expand or shrink the search space, thereby improving obstacle avoidance flexibility and efficiency. Simulation results show that the proposed method surpasses SSA in terms of path length, smoothness, obstacle avoidance capability and computational efficiency in both static and dynamic environments.