ST-FMT*: A Fast Optimal Global Motion Planning for Mobile Robot

This article introduces a secure tunnel fast marching tree motion planning algorithm (ST-FMT*) to provide a secure and optimal path quickly for a mobile robot. The proposed ST-FMT* consists of preprocessing and exploring procedures, which are responsible for establishing a secure tunnel and optimizing the path, respectively. In the preprocessing process, the generalized Voronoi graph is adopted to build an equidistant roadmap and generates an initial collision-free solution rapidly. Then, a secure tunnel is established via the minimum distance from the obstacles to the initial solution to facilitate the concentration of sampling. In the exploration process, the FMT* with uniform sampling within the secure tunnel is utilized to find the optimal solution with high computational efficiency. The theoretical analyses of the ST-FMT* are provided. In a series of scenarios evaluation, the ST-FMT* exhibits fast convergence to the optimal solution in different environments. Besides, the effectiveness of the ST-FMT* is verified in a transportation experiment using a Turtlebot2 mobile robot.