Lab 7 - Motion Planning (RRT)

Tip

Before starting this lab, review Lecture 14 to ensure you are familiar with the material.

Goals:
The goal of this lab is to provide you with tools that will help you in a head-to-head race on a race track. After finishing this lab, your car should be able to do something like this.
Learning Outcomes:
The following fundamentals should be understood by the students upon completion of this lab:

  • Motion Planning basic concepts.

    • Configuration space vs. Workspace: you should understand the difference between configuration space and workspace, and the advantages and disadvantages of planning in each of them.

    • Free space vs. Obstacle space: you should understand the difference between free space and obstacle space.

    • Occupancy grids and Costmaps: you should understand what occupancy grids and costmaps are, how to use them, and how to create them.

  • Motion Planning algorithms. You should understand the basic ideas of these following planning algorithms, their advantages and disadvantages, and when to use them.

    • Grid-based search: Dijkstra’s, A*, and their variants

    • Sampling based algorithms: RRT and its variants

Required Skills: ROS, Python/C++

Allotted Time: 1.5 week

Repository: Github Repository
The repository contains the latex source files as well as any skeleton code. Compile the latex source files to view the most up to date handout.