Mobile robot motion planning by reasoning both at itinerary and path levels

Presents an algorithm for planning a collision-free path for a mobile robot in a planar workspace. The free space is structured by covering it with overlapping convex cells. In a first step, the algorithm searches for an itinerary which is the union of a set of cells and a trajectory skeleton inside it. Then, a more realistic trajectory, dealing with nonholonomics constraints and robot size, is constructed in the neighbouring of the first one. In the case of high cluttered workspaces, the structuration of 3D configuration space can be locally used with the same covering technique.<>