A hybrid path planning technique developed by integrating global and local path planner

Finding path in a given environment seems trivial so research, these days, is focused at finding optimal and quality path. Among others, distance traversed by a robot from start point to reach goal is an important measure of optimality and so is safety of robot while traveling through identified path. In this paper, we present a hybrid technique developed by integrating visibility graph as global path planners and potential field method as local or reactive planner. The hybrid technique not only generates a near optimal path in terms of distance but also ensures that robot, at no point from start to goal, touches any obstacle or comes closer than a user defined distance. The results of proposed technique are really encouraging as robot is kept sufficiently away from obstacles while navigating through them. While maintaining safe distance, increase in distance as compared to shortest possible path is only 3.93 %.