Abstract
We quantitatively analyze the performance of exact and approximate nearest-neighbors algorithms on increasingly high-dimensional problems in the context of sampling-based motion planning. We study the impact of the dimension, number of samples, distance metrics, and sampling schemes on the efficiency and accuracy of nearest-neighbors algorithms. Efficiency measures computation time and accuracy indicates similarity between exact and approximate nearest neighbors.
Our analysis indicates that after a critical dimension, which varies between 15 and 30, exact nearest-neighbors algorithms examine almost all the samples. As a result, exact nearest-neighbors algorithms become impractical for sampling-based motion planners when a considerably large number of samples needs to be generated. The impracticality of exact nearest-neighbors algorithms motivates the use of approximate algorithms, which trade off accuracy for efficiency. We propose a simple algorithm, termed Distance-based Projection onto Euclidean Space (DPES), which computes approximate nearest neighbors by using a distance-based projection of high-dimensional metric spaces onto low-dimensional Euclidean spaces. Our results indicate DPES achieves high efficiency and only a negligible loss in accuracy.
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Plaku, E., Kavraki, L.E. (2008). Quantitative Analysis of Nearest-Neighbors Search in High-Dimensional Sampling-Based Motion Planning. In: Akella, S., Amato, N.M., Huang, W.H., Mishra, B. (eds) Algorithmic Foundation of Robotics VII. Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics, vol 47. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68405-3_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68405-3_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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