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ERCP: speedup path planning through clustering and presearching

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Abstract

Path planning is an important task for robot motion, unmanned aerial vehicle obstacle avoidance, and smart cars. Sampling-based algorithms have achieved significant success in this task. The rapidly random-exploring tree (RRT) is one of the representative algorithms. However, it is exceedingly difficult to strike a balance between path quality and search efficiency. In this paper, we propose an enhanced RRT* with clustering and presearching (ERCP) algorithm to handle this issue. In the clustering phase, we construct an 8-degree undirected graph according to the neighborhood and obstacles. Then, we adopt the Markov clustering technique, which is appropriate for spatial data. The clustering process is efficient since the coarse-grained map considers only points at integer locations. In the presearching phase, we utilize the clustering results to abstract the intact state space as an undirected graph. We employ Dijkstra’s algorithm to perform a presearch on the graph to determine the effective sampling area. In the path planning phase, we use RRT* to extend the space-filling tree within the effective sampling regions. Experiments were conducted on ten maps with different levels of obstacle complexity. The results reveal that ERCP can achieve a more convincing balance between path quality and search efficiency than the three state-of-the-art algorithms with little sacrifice.

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Acknowledgements

This work is in part supported by the Central Government Funds of Guiding Local Scientific and Technological Development (No. 2021ZYD0003), the Sichuan Province Youth Science and Technology Innovation Team (No. 2019JDTD0017), the Science and Technology Planning Project of Sichuan Province (No. 2021YFS0391), and the Scientific Research Project of State Grid Sichuan Electric Power Company Information and Communication Company (No. SGSCXT00XGJS2100116).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computer Science, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, People’s Republic of China

    Kun He & Fan Min

  2. School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, 610500, People’s Republic of China

    Xin-Zheng Niu

  3. School of Sciences, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, People’s Republic of China

    Xue-Yang Min

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  1. Kun He
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  2. Xin-Zheng Niu
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  4. Fan Min
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Correspondence to Fan Min.

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He, K., Niu, XZ., Min, XY. et al. ERCP: speedup path planning through clustering and presearching. Appl Intell 53, 12324–12339 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10489-022-04137-4

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