Real-Time Path Planning for Strategic Missions

Featured Application Our proposal has application in a real problem, whose objective is to guide a mobile robot to a target point in an environment that changes along time. These changes are characterized by the addition of obstacles that prevent navigation or the inability to follow a previously computed route, for instance scenarios of recent hazards or natural disasters. Robot navigation is still an open research topic, mainly regarding applications that require online planning. In this context, this manuscript presents an implementation of the Lifelong Planning A* (LPA*) search algorithm to guide a mobile robot in an environment that changes along time, by detecting obstacles and updating the current mapping information. Firstly, simulations validate the strategy, and later experiments confirm these results considering a real application. The result is that the LPA* algorithm is able to guide the mobile robot to its target in a changing environment. Obstacles are interactively included in the scene to force the route redesign and the seeking for a new optimal solution connecting the current robot position and its target position.