RoA-Planner: Rotatable Area based Path Planner in Dense Spaces

Path planning in obstacle-dense environments is a challenging problem, particularly for robots with asymmetric rectangular footprints. To address this problem, we propose a novel collision-checking approach, called a Rotatable Area, which represents a range of heading angles where the robot can rotate without colliding with obstacles. Based on the relationship between two rotatable areas, we define safe local motion and extend this concept to the RoA-Planner, a path planning framework in SE(2) dense space. We validate our planner through extensive simulations and real-world experiments in complex and narrow environments. The results demonstrate that our method achieves fast planning speed while ensuring safety and robustness, making it suitable for practical applications.