Grafting: A Path Replanning Technique for Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees in Dynamic Environments

Abstract The rapidly-exploring random trees (RRT) is a sampling-based path planner which utilizes simultaneously kinematics and dynamics of a robot. However, since the RRT has produced a robot path without taking the existence of dynamic obstacles into consideration, RRT-based navigation has the risk of a collision with dynamic obstacles. We proposed a path replanning technique for the RRT applied to robot navigation in dynamic environments, which is named grafting. The proposed technique replans a safe and efficient path in real time instead of the original path which may cause a collision with dynamic obstacles. Moreover, the replanned path can be easily merged into the original RRT path because the grafting technique preserves the property of the RRT. The grafting technique was tested by simulations in various dynamic environments, which revealed that the grafting technique was capable of replanning a safe and efficient path for RRT-based navigation in real time.