Efficient Opening Detection

We present an efficient and powerful algorithm for detecting openings. Openings indicate the existence of a new path for the robot. The reliable detection of new openings is of great relevance for the domain of moving objects [2] as a robot typically needs to detect openings for itself to navigate through. It is also especially relevant to the domain of Navigation Among Movable Obstacles in known [8] as well as unknown [3] environments. In these domains a robot has to plan for object manipulations that help it to navigate to the goal. Tremendous speed-ups for algorithms in these domains can be achieved by limiting the considerations of obstacle manipulations to cases where manipulations create new openings. The presented algorithm can detect openings for obstacles of arbitrary shapes being displaced or moving by themselves, in arbitrarily directions in changing environments. To the knowledge of the authors, this is the first algorithm to achieve efficient opening detection for arbitrary shaped obstacles.