Subject: Re: Avoiding Obstacles to reach a destination
References: <4jn4f2$f45@mirv.unsw.edu.au>
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From: breese@imada.ou.dk (Bjorn Reese)
Message-ID: <1996Apr3.141311.18059@imada.ou.dk>
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Organization: Dept. of Math. & Computer Science, Odense University, Denmark
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 1996 14:13:11 GMT
Lines: 29
Newsgroups: comp.ai.games

Avi Pilosof (avip@cse.unsw.edu.au) wrote:

> One of the problems within it is to navigate a robot such that it
> picks up objects and arranges them in a given pattern, avoiding
> obstacles in its way. The destination point is known in advance.

You could use Potential Field as suggested by Jean-Claude Latombe
("Robot Motion Planning", ISBN 0-7923-9129-2)

Make your goal an attractive force, and obstacles to be avoided
repulsive forces. Imagine a marble rolling down towards the goal.
All obstacles are hills which the marble will roll around. This
approach has been applied to commercial robot controllers. The
disadvantage of this method is that it easily gets trapped in
local minima.

> This problem is not a gaming problem for me, but it certainly
> seems to belong in this group, since I can easily see it applying
> in a game situation.

Indeed. I'm experimenting with the above mentioned method, and
it seems to do very well for arcade type of games - very smooth
motions.

--
Bjorn Reese                      Email: breese@imada.ou.dk
Odense University, Denmark       URL:   http://www.imada.ou.dk/~breese

"It's getting late in the game to show any pride or shame" - Marillion
