Implementation of a Navigational Path Planning Algorithm for an Autonomous Mobile Robot

Abstract

An Autonomous mobile robot needs to be equipped with the intelligence of autonomous navigational ability in its operating environment. The ability is mainly decided by the way the robot perceives the environment, the way it plans the navigational path to be traversed, and how it executes its motion actuation. While designing the mobile robots, the accurate perception of the environment is taken care of by intelligent sensing modules. Further, the strategy of navigational path planning is implemented by robust algorithms that ensure the shortest path traversal, hence lesser time consumption and efficient obstacle avoidance capability. The choice of a path planning algorithm depends on the needs of the application employing the mobile robot. The level of autonomy of the mobile robot depends on the way the designer exploits the advantages of the path planning algorithm. The proposed work aims at comparing the intricacies of navigational path planning algorithms, namely, Dijkstra's algorithm, Genetic algorithm and A* algorithm, that can be employed for mobile robots. The demonstrational results of navigational path planning implemented using the A* algorithm is presented