Multivalue coding: application to autonomous robots

SUMMARY The paper describes a free space modeling method by multivalue coding. Each code defines some numerical values representing a set of cells from a grid. The idea consists in using the grid as a Karnaugh board whose rows and columns are binary coded rather than Gray coded. This operating method allows to define, for each code, its grid location and allows numerical comparison in order to locate a code relatively to another. This aspect is helpful for path planning. The free space model is represented by a switching function or a tree to which boolean algebra rules and mathematic operations are applied. We describe an application to mobile robot path planning.