Navigating in Unknown Environment with Rectangular Obstacles

Aohan MEI, Yoshihide IGARASHI

Summary :

We study robot navigation in unknown environment with rectangular obstacles aligned with the x and y axes. We propose a strategy called the modified-bian heuristic, and analyze its efficiency. Let n be the distance between the start point and the target of robot navigation, and let k be the maximum side length among the obstacles in a scene. We show that if k=(o(n) and if the summation of the widths of the obstacles on the line crossing the target and along the y axis is o(n), then ratio of the total distance walked by the robot to the shortest path length between the start point and the target is at most arbitrarily close to 1+k/2, as n grows. For the same restrictions as above on the sizes of the obstacles, the ratio is also at most arbitrarily close to 1+3/4n, as n grows, where is the summation of lengths of the obstacles in y axis direction.

• Publication: IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Fundamentals Vol.E77-A No.7 pp.1157-1162
• Publication Date: 1994/07/25
• Type of Manuscript: PAPER
• Category: Algorithms, Data Structures and Computational Complexity

Authors

Aohan MEI
Yoshihide IGARASHI

Keyword

robot navigation,  unknown environment,  rectangular obstacles,  on-line algorithms,  competitive algorithms