| This thesis examines the ability of an agent to move from one point to another, or in a more abstract sense, its ability, once presented with a situation, to affect its immediate environment with a sequence of actions that is carefully designed so that the reaction of the environment carries it to the goal. An approach, based on artificial potential fields, is investigated for generating such a capability. This approach is in turn used as a framework to generate different navigation techniques, each of which is geared towards a certain application. It is shown that the potential approach provides an efficient means for building path planners that, among other things, can be easily integrated in an autonomous navigation system. |
