6,969 research outputs found
Sampling-based Algorithms for Optimal Motion Planning
During the last decade, sampling-based path planning algorithms, such as
Probabilistic RoadMaps (PRM) and Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT), have
been shown to work well in practice and possess theoretical guarantees such as
probabilistic completeness. However, little effort has been devoted to the
formal analysis of the quality of the solution returned by such algorithms,
e.g., as a function of the number of samples. The purpose of this paper is to
fill this gap, by rigorously analyzing the asymptotic behavior of the cost of
the solution returned by stochastic sampling-based algorithms as the number of
samples increases. A number of negative results are provided, characterizing
existing algorithms, e.g., showing that, under mild technical conditions, the
cost of the solution returned by broadly used sampling-based algorithms
converges almost surely to a non-optimal value. The main contribution of the
paper is the introduction of new algorithms, namely, PRM* and RRT*, which are
provably asymptotically optimal, i.e., such that the cost of the returned
solution converges almost surely to the optimum. Moreover, it is shown that the
computational complexity of the new algorithms is within a constant factor of
that of their probabilistically complete (but not asymptotically optimal)
counterparts. The analysis in this paper hinges on novel connections between
stochastic sampling-based path planning algorithms and the theory of random
geometric graphs.Comment: 76 pages, 26 figures, to appear in International Journal of Robotics
Researc
Finding Connected Dense -Subgraphs
Given a connected graph on vertices and a positive integer ,
a subgraph of on vertices is called a -subgraph in . We design
combinatorial approximation algorithms for finding a connected -subgraph in
such that its density is at least a factor
of the density of the densest -subgraph
in (which is not necessarily connected). These particularly provide the
first non-trivial approximations for the densest connected -subgraph problem
on general graphs
Empirical geodesic graphs and CAT(k) metrics for data analysis
A methodology is developed for data analysis based on empirically constructed
geodesic metric spaces. For a probability distribution, the length along a path
between two points can be defined as the amount of probability mass accumulated
along the path. The geodesic, then, is the shortest such path and defines a
geodesic metric. Such metrics are transformed in a number of ways to produce
parametrised families of geodesic metric spaces, empirical versions of which
allow computation of intrinsic means and associated measures of dispersion.
These reveal properties of the data, based on geometry, such as those that are
difficult to see from the raw Euclidean distances. Examples of application
include clustering and classification. For certain parameter ranges, the spaces
become CAT(0) spaces and the intrinsic means are unique. In one case, a minimal
spanning tree of a graph based on the data becomes CAT(0). In another, a
so-called "metric cone" construction allows extension to CAT() spaces. It is
shown how to empirically tune the parameters of the metrics, making it possible
to apply them to a number of real cases.Comment: Statistics and Computing, 201
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