Spatially distributed lane planning for navigation in 3D environments
Ritesh Sharma, Marcelo Kallmann · Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds · 2023
Abstract This article introduces the new problem of planning spatially distributed lanes for supporting multi‐agent navigation applications in 3D environments. Our proposed approach computes the max‐flow of a 3D medial axis representation of the environment in order to globally compute collision‐free lanes exploring the entire free space of the volumetric scene. Our method addresses agent clearance and path dispersion in order to provide a comprehensive solution to globally compute lanes to be used by multiple agents in 3D environments. By selecting the desired lane dispersion our approach offers an intuitive and powerful way to explore variations in the computed collections of lanes. Dispersion is addressed with a combination of new techniques based on max flow computation, clearance‐based path separation, and adaptive shortcut‐based smoothing.