An Overview of Autonomous Mobile Robot Path Planning Algorithms

Determination of a collision free path for a robot between start and goal positions through obstacles cluttered in a workspace is central to the design of an autonomous robot path planning. This paper presents an overview of autonomous mobile robot path planning focusing on algorithms that produce an optimal path for a robot to navigate in an environment. To complete the navigation task, the algorithms will read the map of the environment or workspace and subsequently attempts to create free paths for the robot to traverse in the workspace without colliding with objects and obstacles. Appropriate or correct and suitable algorithms will fulfill its function fast enough, that is, to find an optimal path for the robot to traverse in, even if there are a large number of obstacles cluttered in a complex environment. To achieve this, various approaches in the design of algorithms used to develop an ideal path planning system for autonomous mobile robots have been proposed by many researchers. Simulation and experimental results from previous research shows that algorithms play an important role to produce an optimal path (short, smooth and robust) for autonomous robot navigation and simultaneously it prove that appropriate algorithms can run fast enough to be used practically without time-consuming problem. This paper presents an overview and discusses the strength and weakness of path planning algorithms developed and used by previous and current researchers.