Hierarchical cell decompositions of Configuration Space can be of great value for enhancing sampling-based path planners, as well as for other robotic tasks with requirements beyond the planning of free paths. This paper proposes an efficient method to obtain a hierarchical cell decomposition of C-space that is based on: a) the use of a deterministic sampling sequence that allows an uniform and incremental exploration of the space, and b) the use of distance measurements to handle as much information as possible from each sample in order to make the procedure more efficient. The proposed cell decomposition procedure is applied to different path planning methods.

Peer Reviewed