Path Planning Algorithms for Mobile Robots: A Survey

Mobile robots have applications in military (for reconnaissance, search and rescue operations, bomb detection, surveillance), transportation (for cargo and packet delivery), data acquisition, etc. For the mobile robots to be able to execute these tasks with minimum or no human intervention, they need to be autonomous and intelligent. Path planning (PP) is one of the most critical areas of concern in the field of autonomous mobile robots. It is about obtaining a collision-free motion optimal path based on either time, distance, energy or cost in a static or dynamic environment containing obstacles. However, power limitation hinders the mobile robots to accomplish their task of reaching the target location as there are several paths they can follow. Each of these paths has its own path length, cost (i.e., time to reach destination), and energy constraint, thus, the need to plan for an optimal path according to a certain performance criterion. Significant research has been conducted in recent years to address the PP problem. Hence, this chapter is aimed at presenting the different approaches for PP of mobile robots with respect to different optimality criteria (time, distance, energy and cost), challenges and making recommendations on possible areas of future research.