English

Characterizing minimum-length coordinated motions for two discs

Computational Geometry 2017-01-23 v4

Abstract

We study the problem of determining optimal coordinated motions for two disc robots in an otherwise obstacle-free plane. Using the total path length traced by the two disc centres as a measure of distance, we give an exact characterization of a shortest collision-avoiding motion for all initial and final configurations of the robots. The individual paths are composed of at most six (straight or circular-arc) segments, and their total length can be expressed as a simple integral with a closed form solution depending only on the initial and final configuration of the robots. Furthermore, the paths can be parametrized in such a way that (i) only one robot is moving at any given time (decoupled motion), or (ii) the angle between the two robots' centres changes monotonically.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1607.04005,
  title  = {Characterizing minimum-length coordinated motions for two discs},
  author = {David Kirkpatrick and Paul Liu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1607.04005},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

long-form of conference submission, 26 pages, 18 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T14:54:20.114Z