The purpose of this study is to develop an efficient offline path planning algorithm
that is capable of finding optimal collision-free paths from a starting point to a goal
point. The algorithm is based on Voronoi diagram method for the environment
representation combined with Dijkstra’s algorithm to find the shortest path. Since
Voronoi diagram path exhibits sharp corners and redundant turns, path tracking was
applied considering the robot’s kinematic constraints. The results has shown that the
Voronoi diagram path planning method recorded fast computational time as it
provides simpler, faster and efficient path finding. The final path, after considering
robot’s kinematic constraints, provides shorter path length and smoother compared to
the original one. The final path can be tuned to the desired path by tuning the
parameter setting; velocity, v and minimum turning radius, Rmin. In comparison with
the Cell Decomposition method, it shows that Voronoi diagram has a faster
computation time. This leads to the reduced cost in terms of time. The findings of
this research have shown that Voronoi Diagram and Dijkstra’s Algorithm are a good
combination in the path planning problem in terms of finding a safe and shortest
path
