GRID BASED PATH PLANNING ALGORITHMS FOR EXTINGUISHING FOREST FIRES

Abstract

Path planning plays an important role in robotics and the automation newlinefield in both static and dynamic environments. Many researchers have been newlineworking on this field since 1980. Forests contain potential resources for newlinehuman beings, plants, animals and also for maintaining the environment. newlineThe major threat to forests is a forest fire, since it destroys all the resources. newlineHence, once fires occur, they have to be extinguished as early as possible newlinethrough the shortest path, by mobile robots or fire personnel. This thesis newlineinvestigates grid based path planning algorithms to be used by a mobile newlinerobot for extinguishing forest fires. The algorithms developed are based on newlinethe assumption that information about the environment i.e. forest, is newlinecompletely known in advance. The aim of this work is to develop tools based newlineon algorithms, for finding the optimal path from the start to the goal without newlinecollision with obstacles subject to conditions such as time, distance and the newlinenumber of obstacles. The algorithms developed in this thesis make robotic newlinemotion more predictable. The algorithms are developed using mathematical newlineand soft computing techniques. Also, they are complete in the sense that newlinethey will generate a path if one exists, otherwise they inform that no path newlineexists. This thesis also suggests that the behavior, i.e., the path of the robot newlinedepends on both information about the environment and the path planning newlinealgorithm used. A comparison of all the algorithms developed in this thesis newlinewith the A* algorithm shows that the memory requirements and execution newlinetime to generate a path is less for the developed algorithms. Some newlinealgorithms produce path, the distance of which is the same or less, and newlineothers produce longer paths when compared with the A* algorithm. It is also newlineobserved that if the number of obstacles is kept at a minimum, then the newlineexecution time and distance are greatly reduced. newline