@misc{cogprints3751, volume = {9}, title = {The Ariadne's Clew Algorithm}, author = {Dr E Mazer and Dr J-M Ahuactzin and Dr P Bessiere}, year = {1998}, pages = {295--316}, journal = {Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR)}, url = {http://cogprints.org/3751/}, abstract = {We present a new approach to path planning, called the ``Ariadne's clew algorithm''. It is designed to find paths in high-dimensional continuous spaces and applies to robots with many degrees of freedom in static, as well as dynamic environments --- ones where obstacles may move. The Ariadne's clew algorithm comprises two sub-algorithms, called SEARCH and EXPLORE, applied in an interleaved manner. EXPLORE builds a representation of the accessible space while SEARCH looks for the target. Both are posed as optimization problems. We describe a real implementation of the algorithm to plan paths for a six degrees of freedom arm in a dynamic environment where another six degrees of freedom arm is used as a moving obstacle. Experimental results show that a path is found in about one second without any pre-processing.} }