Robot Path Planning Using Analog Circuit Phase Delay

A robot's motion planner should find a path from its current location to its goal in an optimum way, where optimality in this paper is the shortest path. This paper proposes a new method of decision making using a phase delay technique. The robot's workspace is converted into a resistive-capacitive grid network, and the path is found by measuring and comparing the propagation times for a signal from the goal to the robot's next possible positions. A reconfigurable AVLSI architecture based on floating-gate transistors is proposed and simulation results with analytical complexity analysis equations are presented to describe the algorithm's performance. Finally, results from a robot hardware-in-the-loop platform are presented.