Autonomously Implemented Versatile Path Planning for Mobile Robots Based on Cellular Automata and Ant Colony

A path planning method for mobile robots based on two dimensional cellular automata is proposed. The method can be applied for environments with both concave and convex obstacles. It is also appropriate for multi-robot problems as well as dynamic environments. In order to develop the planning method, environment of the robot is decomposed to a rectangular grid and the automata is defined with four states including Robot cell, Free cell, Goal cell and Obstacle cell. Evolution rules of automata are proposed in order to direct the robot toward its goal. CA based path planner method is afterwards modified by a colony technique to be applicable for concave obstacles. Then a layered architecture is proposed to autonomously implement the planning algorithm. The architecture employs an abstraction approach which makes the complexity manageable. An important feature of the architecture is internal artifacts that have some beliefs about the world. Most actions of the robot are planned and performed with respect to these artifacts.