Optimal path planning of mobile robots: A review

Mobile robots are increasingly used in automated industrial environments. There are also other applications like planet exploration, surveillance, landmine detection, etc. In all these applications, in order that the mobile robots perform their tasks, collision-free path planning is a prerequisite. This article provides an overview of the research progress in path planning of a mobile robot for off-line as well as on-line environments. Commonly used classic and evolutionary approaches of path planning of mobile robots have been addressed. Review shows that evolutionary optimization algorithms are computationally efficient and hence are increasingly being used in tandem with classic approaches while handling Non-deterministic Polynomial time hard (NP-hard) problems. Also, challenges involved in developing a computationally efficient path planning algorithm are addressed.   Key words: Path planning, mobile robot, off-line environment, on-line environment, classic, evolutionary algorithms.