TIME-OPTIMAL PATHS FOR HIGH-SPEED MANEUVERING

Recent theoretical results have completely solved the problem of determining the minimal length path Sor a vehicle moving from an initial configuration to a final configuration. Time-optimal paths for a constant-speed vehicle are a subset of the minimum length paths. The time-optimal paths consist of sequences of arcs of circles and straight lines. The Pontryagin Maximum Principle introduces concepts (dural variables, bang-bang solutions, singular solutions, and transversality conditions) that provide important insight into tile nature of the time-optimal paths. We have created a module that finds the time-optimal path ft om an initial configuration to a final configuration. We have demonstrated that the paths can be followed by a large (820-kg) mobile robot.