Exploratory Aspects of Sensor Based Planning

In sensor based planning exploration is unavoidable. To understand this aspect of sensor based planning, the authors consider the problem of motion planning for a point with "tactile sensors". In dimensions greater than two, this problem has been shown to be unsolvable given a certain mathematical framework. But, if the formulation of the problem is changed by taking the C-space to be discrete, then path planning with tactile sensors is possible. In this setting we give a resolution complete algorithm for planning the motion of a point in any dimension. Measuring the complexity of the problem by the number of discrete moves that the robot makes, we give an upper bound for the complexity of our algorithm that is linear in the surface area of the boundary of the C-space obstacles. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-98-07. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/808 Exploratory Aspects of Sensor Based Planning Andrew Hicks, David Pettey University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science Computer and Information Science Department Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389 Exploratory Aspects of Sensor Based Planning Technical Report MS-CIS-98-07 Andrew Hicks David Pettey GRASP Laboratory Department of Computer and Information Science University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104 [email protected]