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-Path Planning Strategies, for information passing (eg. Hierarchical)

-Path Planning Methods (algorithms used for path planning)

-Internal Representations

-Minimization (Which Costs are minimized?)

-Limits (Which limits are considered?)

-Solution type (Robot, Joint Space, Cartesian Space, Straight Line,

Via Points with Rotations, Splines, etc.)

IMPLEMENTATION EVALUATION CRITERIA:

-Execution (Time, Machine, Language)

-Testing (What are the experimental results?)

Most of these categories are quite basic, but some are not so clearly defined. All of these areas will be discussed in the subsequent sections.

40.2 GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

The general requirements of a path planner are discussed in this section. Some of the factors involved in the application, and for evaluating their performance, are described. These factors do not include all the essential parts of a path planner, nor all of the possible requirements, but they provide a good idea of what the current requirements are.

40.2.1 PROBLEM DIMENSIONALITY

A problem may be represented in one of a number of different dimensions. The fewer the dimensions in the problem, the simpler the solution. A 2D problem is relatively simple, and good solutions already exist for finding paths in this representation. When height is added to the 2D obstacles, it becomes a 2.5D problem. This 2.5D problem is also within the grasp of current problem solving routines. When we try a 3D problem the problem starts to push the current limits of researched techniques and computational ability.