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Planning a time-minimal motion among moving obstacles

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Abstract

Motion planning for a point robot is studied in a time-varying environment. Each obstacle is a convex polygon that moves in a fixed direction at a constant speed. The point to be reached (referred to as the destination point) also moves along a known trajectory. The concept of “accessibility” from a point to a moving object is introduced, and is used to define a graph on a set of moving obstacles. If the point robot is able to move faster than any of the obstacles, then the graph exhibits an important property: a time-minimal motion is given as a sequence of edges in the graph. An algorithm is described for generating a time-minimal motion and its execution time is analyzed.

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Communicated by David P. Dobkin.

The support of the National Science Foundation under Grants IRI-88-02457 and IRI-90-17393 is gratefully acknowledged. This work is supported in part by the Office of Engineering Research Program, Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy, under Contract No. DE-AC05-84OR21400 with Martin Marietta Energy Systems, Inc. and in part by an appointment to the U.S. Department of Energy Postgraduate Research Program administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

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Fujimura, K., Samet, H. Planning a time-minimal motion among moving obstacles. Algorithmica 10, 41–63 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01908631

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01908631

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