An Algorithm for Robot Path Planning with Cellular Automata

The application of Cellular Automata to the problem of robot path planning is presented. It is shown that a Cellular Automata allows the efficient computation of an optimal collision free path from an initial to a goal configuration on a physical space cluttered with obstacles. The cellular space represents a discrete version of the workspace for a mobile robot. The path computation is performed by the successive application of two simple local transition functions. The method was experimentally tested for a small robot on a real environment, in all cases very good paths were obtained with negligible computer effort. These results indicate that the Cellular Automata approach is a very promising method for real time robot path planning