db-A*: Discontinuity-bounded Search for Kinodynamic Mobile Robot Motion Planning

Abstract

We consider time-optimal motion planning for dynamical systems that are translation-invariant, a property that holds for many mobile robots, such as differential-drives, cars, airplanes, and multirotors. Our key insight is that we can extend graph-search algorithms to the continuous case when used symbiotically with optimization. For the graph search, we introduce discontinuity-bounded A* (db-A*), a generalization of the A* algorithm that uses concepts and data structures from sampling-based planners. Db-A* reuses short trajectories, so-called motion primitives, as edges and allows a maximum user-specified discontinuity at the vertices. These trajectories are locally repaired with trajectory optimization, which also provides new improved motion primitives. Our novel kinodynamic motion planner, kMP-db-A*, has almost surely asymptotic optimal behavior and computes near-optimal solutions quickly. For our empirical validation, we provide the first benchmark that compares search-, sampling-, and optimizationbased time-optimal motion planning on multiple dynamical systems in different settings. Compared to the baselines, kMPdb-A* consistently solves more problem instances, finds lowercost initial solutions, and converges more quickly.A) δ = 0.41 T ∆t = 13.3s B) δ = 0.22 T ∆t = 16.3s C) δ = 0.00 T ∆t = 19.5s