Abstract-Optimal path planning refers to find the collision free, shortest, and smooth route between start and goal positions. This task is essential in many robotic applications such as autonomous car, surveillance operations, agricultural robots, planetary and space exploration missions. Rapidly-exploring Random Tree Star (RRT*) is a renowned sampling based planning approach. It has gained immense popularity due to its support for high dimensional complex problems. A significant body of research has addressed the problem of optimal path planning for mobile robots using RRT* based approaches. However, no updated survey on RRT* based approaches is available. Considering the rapid pace of development in this field, this paper presents a comprehensive review of RRT* based path planning approaches. Current issues relevant to noticeable advancements in the field are investigated and whole discussion is concluded with challenges and future research directions.

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With the advent of mobile robots in commercial applications, the problem of path-planning has acquired significant attention from the research community. An optimal path for a mobile robot is measured by various factors such as path length, collision-free space, execution time, and the total number of turns. MEA* is an efficient variation of A* for optimal path-planning of mobile robots. RRT*-AB is a sampling-based planner with rapid convergence rate, and improved time and space requirements than other sampling-based methods such as RRT*. The purpose of this paper is the review and performance comparison of these planners based on metrics, i.e., path length, execution time, and memory requirements. All planners are tested in structured and complex unstructured environments cluttered with obstacles. Performance plots and statistical analysis have shown that MEA* requires less memory and computational time than other planners. These advantages of MEA* make it suitable for off-line applications using small robots with constrained power and memory resources. Moreover, performance plots of path length of MEA* is comparable to RRT*-AB with less execution time in the 2D environment. However, RRT*-AB will outperform MEA* in high-dimensional problems because of its inherited suitability for complex problems.

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