Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Optimal Path Planning And The Fast Marching Method, J. J. Clark

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The problem of determining an optimal path for an object moving through some obstacle space presents several nontrivial subproblems. The foremost being the computational complexity that is involved and how to best deal with the associated large data volume. For example, a non-symmetric object moving in three dimensions possesses six degrees of freedom. This can lead to a computational grid that may easily be on the order of 10¹². Furthermore, for every point in the computational domain, several complex calculations must be performed. These include performing tests to determine if the object and obstacles intersect, and numerically solving …