Metaheuristic global path planning algorithm for mobile robots

Abstract

A new metaheuristic method applied to the global path planning for mobile robots in dynamic environments is presented. This algorithm, named the quad harmony search method, consists of dividing the robot's environment into free regions by applying the quad-tree algorithm and utilising this information to accelerate the next phase which implements the harmony search optimisation method to provide the optimal route. The presented results have displayed that this method gives best results when compared to other metaheuristic techniques and is therefore applicable to the global path planning problem.