Automatic path planning for an auto-guided vehicle based on a topological approach

This paper describes a new and fast path-planning method for Auto Guided Vehicles (AGVs), profiting the advantages of the Fast Distance Transformation (FDT), and some topological aspects of discrete spaces. First, we find the graph including all possible collision-free paths from a top view of the environment, then we select the optimal path for the AGV. For this, the proposed method uses both the FDT and variations of some topological methods as thinning and skeletonization, to obtain the free space skeleton. Unlike conventional methods, the proposed approach is capable to include the AGV and the target intrinsically into the path and, at the same time it obtains the collision-free path's graph, profiting the topological concept of hole. We propose to use a logical operator over the FDT instead of the classical morphologic operators over the discrete array (erosion and dilation), to obtain a much faster algorithm. The optimal path is selected by conventional algorithms, and smoothed by an improved B-spline characterization to be used as a reference by the AGV.