(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2012-05)
Koziol, Scott; Hasler, Jennifer; Stilman, Mike
We present the successful application of reconfigurable
Analog-Very-Large-Scale-Integrated (AVLSI) circuits
to motion planning for the AmigoBot robot. Previous research
has shown that custom application-specific-integrated-circuits
(ASICs) can be used for robot path planning. However, ASICs
are typically fixed circuit designs that require long fabrication
times on the order of months. In contrast, our reconfigurable
analog circuits called Field Programmable Analog Arrays
(FPAAs) implement a variety of AVLSI circuits in minutes.
We present experimental results of online robot path planning
using FPAA circuitry, validating our assertion that FPAA-based
AVLSI design is a feasible approach to computing complete
motion plans using analog floating-gate resistive grids. We
demonstrate the integration of FPAA hardware and software
with a real robot platform and hardware in the loop simulations,
present the trajectories developed by our planner and provide
analysis of the time and space complexity of our proposed
approach. The paper concludes by formulating metrics that
identify domains where analog solutions to planning may be
faster and more efficient than traditional, digital robot planning
techniques.