MIT talk: The subjective nature of straight lines: shortest paths for mobile Robots

Speaker: Matthew T. Mason, Director, Robotics Institute, CMU
Date: Tuesday, November 8 2005

Abstract:
One way to define a straight line for a mobile robot is to put a bound on the robot's velocity, and then solve for the time-optimal paths using Pontryagin's maximum principle. Different types of mobile robots yield different solutions, corresponding to different notions of straight lines and distance. The resulting robot-specific metrics are useful for motion planning.