Physical Path Planning Using the GNATs

Abstract

We continue our investigation into the application of pervasive, embedded networks to support multi-robot tasks. In this work we use a new a hardware platform, the GNATs, to aid in path planning. We have implemented a physical path planning algorithm on the GNATs previously studied in simulation. A distributed version of the wavefront path planning algorithm is used to propagate paths throughout the network, thereby planning a path in the real world. This creates a graph of traversable paths that are nearly optimal in a dynamic environment.