Robot path planning using VLSI resistive grids

The authors (1991) have presented results from software simulations of path planning for mobile robots in 2-D environments using resistive grids. They showed that paths could be computed incrementally in real time with a serial computer (such as a DSP chip) for slowly-moving robots navigating in static environments. For rapidly-changing environments with dynamic obstacles, however, a hardware implementation of the resistive grid is required to exploit the advantages of using parallel analogue computation so that the path may still be computed in real time. They have implemented a silicon VLSI resistive grid on a 2 mm×2 mm proof-of-concept test chip using the ORBIT 2 μm process, the results from which are presented in this paper