Essentials of Path Planning for Autonomous Vehicle Systems
I build navigation software for drones that can't rely on GPS. Whenever I explain that work, I end up explaining the same thing first: where path planning sits in an autonomous system, and why it's harder than "find the shortest route." This is that explanation, written once, properly.
The examples lean on self-driving cars because that's where the literature is deepest. Everything here carries over to drones, ground robots, and boats, with a few differences I'll cover near the end.
Why autonomy, and why now
Autonomous driving is an old idea. Experiments with radio-controlled "driverless" cars date back to the 1920s. What changed in the last decade is that sensors became cheap, compute moved to the edge, and deep learning made perception actually work.
The safety argument is the one you hear most. You'll often see the claim that around 94% of crashes are caused by human error. That number...
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