Motion Planning for Planar Open-Chains with Point Obstacles

Problem statement:

Given start and goal configurations of a closed polygonal chain, determine an optimal trajectory connecting the start to the goal.

We have developed a low-order polynomial-time complete algorithm for solving this problem; if a solution exists, it will be found; if not, nonexistence will be reported. You can see some of our solutions in action by clicking on the film strip images below.

Here are some related papers: ICRA 2004, WAFR 2004.