On soft predicates in subdivision motion planning
Cong Wang, Yi‐Jen Chiang, Chee Keng Yap · 2013
We propose to design new algorithms for motion planning problems using the well-known Domain Subdivision paradigm, coupled with "soft" predicates. Unlike the traditional exact predicates in computational geometry, our primitives are only exact in the limit. We introduce the notion of resolution-exact algorithms in motion planning: such an algorithm has an "accuracy" constant K> 1, and takes an arbitrary input "resolution" parameter ε>0 such that: if there is a path with clearance Kε, it will output a path with clearance ε/K; if there are no paths with clearance ε/K, it reports "no path". Besides the focus on soft predicates, our framework also admits a variety of global search strategies including forms of the A* search and probabilistic search.