Path planning

WARNING: Since V-REP release 3.3.0, a plugin wrapping the OMPL library is available. It is highly recommended to use the path planning API functions offered by that plugin, instead of using this old built-in path/motion planning functionality, since the plugin/OMPL approach is much more flexible and scalable. The following documentation is deprecated.

V-REP's path planning module allows handling path planning tasks in 3D-space, and in 2D-space for vehicles with non-holonomic motion constraints. The path planning module does not include motion planning for kinematic chains, which is handled by the motion planning module. Following figures illustrate some path planning examples in V-REP:

[(1) holonomic path planning, (2) non-holonomic path planning]


A path planning task usually takes several input values or parameters:

  • a start position (or start configuration): this is the initial configuration of a device (e.g. robot).
  • a goal position (or goal configuration): this is the desired configuration for the device or robot.
  • obstacles: those are the objects that the device (or robot) shouldn't be colliding with, while following a path from the start to the goal configuration.
  • A path linking the start configuration to the goal configuration can be specified (or restricted to be) in a configuration space with a specific number of dimensions (e.g. the X, Y configuration space). Moreover additional constraints are usually needed that make the task more complicated (e.g. keeping a certain distance threshold to the obstacles, or moving only in one direction).


    Recommended topics

  • Related API functions
  • Using the path planning module
  • Path planning dialog