Research on incremental heuristic path planner with variable dimensional state space

Path planning with kinodynamic constraints is often required for mobile robots. Meanwhile, the robot often operates in dynamic and time-varying environments, so the effectiveness of the planner should be guaranteed. In this paper we present an incremental heuristic path planner based on variable dimensional state space. The proposed planner not only considers the robot's kinodynamic constraints into planning, but also guarantees the effectiveness. First, the variable dimensional state space is designed. The high-dimensional state space is organized around the robot and the low-dimensional state space elsewhere. Then, an incremental heuristic path planner is proposed based on the variable dimensional state space. The incremental and anytime properties of the planner are guaranteed by reusing previous computation. Finally, the effectiveness of the planner is confirmed by simulation and robot experiments.