Improving motion planning in weakly connected configuration spaces

Even if the probabilistic motion planner methods (PRM or RRT) have been successful for robot path planning, it remains a challenge in a constrained cases with narrow passages. The RRT is a powerful tool for a simple request, but the performances of approaches falls sharply when the search has several narrow passages. The introduction of several trees can reduce this problem, but has the disadvantage of requiring the control of the number and the growth of these trees. However, this can be done using the properties of the Visibility-PRM. Combining the ideas of the Visibility-PRM with a multi-RRT (local trees), a new algorithm is presented and experimental results show the importance and effectiveness of the method.