Path planning using elastic sheet paradigm approach

To attain true autonomy, mobile robots must be able to plan and execute collision-free paths through an environment populated with obstacles. This paper presents a simple paradigm for two-dimensional path planning. The paradigm is called the elastic sheet paradigm or ESP. The development and modeling of the paradigm is presented. ESPs use in environments containing convex and concave polygonal obstacles is discussed. A software simulation of this technique was developed and it finds paths in relatively complex environments quickly and appears to have real-time applications