Acquiring effective knowledge of environment geometry for minimum-time control of a mobile robot

Several previous formulations of the problem of planning trajectories that make good use of the dynamics of a mobile robot with the objective of minimum-time control are considered. Some shortcomings of these formulations for practical application to an autonomous mobile robot are noted. An alternative formulation is proposed, and a solution to the problem within this formulation is described. In this approach, the initial trajectory along some route may be guaranteed safe on the basis of local information alone. On subsequent traversals of the same route, an approximation to a minimum-time trajectory is found without employing an accurate global representation of the environment