An Advanced Path-Planner for Militarily Relevant Environments

A path planner is an integral part of any unmanned vehicle that is intended to autonomously navigate to a desired goal location. Although a great deal of research has been done in the field of path planning, there are still unsolved issues that require additional work. This project proposes several innovations to existing path planning technology that can deal with a number of issues that arise in militarily relevant environments. These issues include planning paths in the presence of numerous moving and dynamic obstacles, such as dismounted soldiers, planning paths that take into account areas of poor or no GPS signals, and planning paths using information about the uncertainties in sensor data, obstacle locations, and the vehicle’s own location. The goal of this research and development effort is to produce path planning software and analysis tools for unmanned ground vehicles that can successfully operate in such militarily relevant environments.