Question

Define Obstacle expansion (or obstacle inflation). Explain the trade off between Exploration and Exploitation during robot localization in a map.

Answer 1

Obstacle expansion is a method used in robotics for obstacle avoidance during robot motion. It gives a much efficient method to avoid obstacles by giving commands. Obstacle expansion is done to reduce any further complication during motion. Hence the problem can be reduced to a point by object expansion. The path of a point is found out through configuration space in this way.

The algorithm used for motion planning is called Exploring/ Exploiting Tree (EET) which gives better efficiency. The trade off in this method is that completeness is traded off for efficiency. So when we get more efficient the completeness is not present. But it helps in outperforming all other methods and can also tackle many real world motion planning challenges.