Obtaining Optimal Mobile-Robot Paths with Nonsmooth Anisotropic Cost Functions Using Qualitative-State Reasoning

a cost or feasibility on the traversal heading. Gravity, friction, visibility, and safety are often nisotropic for mobile robots. Anisotropism often differs qualitatively with heading, as when . M a vehicle has insufficient power to go uphill or must brake to avoid accelerating downhill odeling qualitative distinctions requires discontinuities in either the cost-per-traversalc distance function or its derivatives, preventing direct application of most results of the cal ulus of variations. We present a new approach to optimal anisotropic path planning that first