The Path-Planning problem is a basic issue in mobile robotics, in order to allow the robots to solve more complex tasks, for example, an exploration assignment in which the distance given by the planner is taken as a utility measure. Among the different proposed approaches, algorithms based on an exact cell decomposition of the environment are very popular. In this paper, we present a new algorithm for universal path planning in cell decomposition, using a raster scan method for computing the Exact Euclidean Distance Transform (EEDT) for each cell in the map. Our algorithm computes, for every cell in the map, the point sequence to the goal. For each sequence, the sub-goals are selected near to the vertices of the obstacles, reducing the total distance to the goal without post processing. At the end, we obtain a smooth path up to the goal without the need for post-processing. The paths are computed by visibility verification among the cells, exploiting the processing performed in the neighbouring cells.

Abstract. The behavior of modern meta-heuristics is directed by both, the variation operators, and the values selected for the parameters of the approach. Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a meta-heuristic which has been found to be very successful in a wide variety of optimization tasks. In PSO, a swarm of particles fly through hyper-dimensional search space being attracted by both, their personal best position and the best position found so far within a neighborhood.In this paper, we perform a statistical study in order to analyze whether the neighborhood topology promotes a convergence acceleration in four PSO-based algorithms: the basic PSO, the Bare-bones PSO, an extension of BBPSO and the Bare-bones Differential Evolution. Our results indicate that the convergence rate of a PSO-based approach has a strongly dependence of the topology used. We also found that the topology most widely used is not necessarily the best topology for every PSO-based algorithm.

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