When to explicitly replan paths for mobile robots

This paper investigates a range of strategies for determining when to explicitly replan paths. An computationally inexpensive event-driven method is presented which allows the robot to execute an a priori path reactively until a significant deviation in the path occurs, at which point the robot explicitly replans. The event-driven strategy is compared to replanning after every move, and replanning after every n moves on a mobile robot for a wide variety of influences, including different unmodeled obstacle configurations and densities, and quality of the a priori map. The paper concludes that, in general, planning as frequently as resources permits results in smoother actual paths and faster completions. However, if the updated map is inaccurate, the event-driven method is superior.