An improved PSO for path planning of mobile robots and its parameters discussion

An improved path planning algorithm for mobile robot in known environment is presented in this paper. Firstly, the environment representation method was introduced and a path connecting the start node and the goal node was coded as a particle. Then, a particular “active region” for particles was investigated according to the location of obstacles. The initial particle population was generated within this region and particles flied in the “active region” to search for the optimum path. Simulation studies in simple and complex environment proved that the effectiveness of proposed algorithm. Finally, the parameters discussion is also carried out in order to demonstrate the influence of parameters such as population size, particle dimension, and maximum iteration number.