• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.36-41
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• 2011

Configuration space(C-space) including configuration obstacle(C-obstacle) is one of the most important concepts in mobile robot path planning. Using C-space and C-obstacles, the robot with different shapes and moving mechanisms can be considered as a point in the C-space. And, as a result, the collision-free path for the robot can be easily achieved. To make C-space including C-obstacle, many researchers used circular approximation method for the efficient caluculation time. This method can help us to save our time by approximating the shape of a robot as the minimum sized circle which can cover all the area of robot. But, by using the circle larger than the robot, more space are considered as the part of robot and, as a result, some obstacles which are very near each other may be considered as a combined one obstacle. To solve this problem, multi-level configuration space is proposed by this paper. This multi-level method also use the circular approximation method as the initial step. But, after finding the initial path, it will check how many obstacles are combined. And then, for each combined obstacle, more accurate C-space generation will be continued. To check the efficiency of the proposed algorithm, time for c-space generation are compared with the well-known accurate C-space generation method using various types of robot shape.