Bidirectional Sampling Based Search Without Two Point Boundary Value Solution

Abstract: Bidirectional motion planning approaches decrease planning time, on average, compared to their unidirectional counterparts. In single-query feasible motion planning, using bidirectional search to find a continuous motion plan requires an edge connection between the forward and reverse search trees. Such a tree-tree connection requires solving a two-point Boundary Value Problem (BVP). However, a two-point BVP solution can be difficult or impossible to calculate for many systems. We present a novel bidirectional search strategy that does not require solving the two-point BVP. Instead of connecting the forward and reverse trees directly, the reverse tree's cost information is used as a guiding heuristic for the forward search. This enables the forward search to quickly converge to a feasible solution without solving the two-point BVP. We propose two new algorithms (GBRRT and GABRRT) that use this strategy and run multiple software simulations using multiple dynamical systems and real-world hardware experiments to show that our algorithms perform on-par or better than existing state-of-the-art methods in quickly finding an initial feasible solution.