Path planning of a climbing robot using mixed integer linear programming

To study path planning problem in 3D building environments for a climbing robot which is named as City-Climber, a path planning method using mixed integer linear programming (MILP) was developed. In order to use MILP to solve obstacle avoidance problems, the robot dynamic model was simplified and decoupled into linear system by introducing a restricting admissible control. The decoupled model can be rewritten as a linear program with mixed integer linear constraints that account for the collision avoidance. Moreover, a new cost function that is suitable for wall-climbing robot was proposed. A key benefit of this approach is that the path optimization can be readily solved using the AMPL and CPLEX optimization software with a Matlab interface. Simulation results in a cuboid room show that the framework of MILP is suited for path planning and obstacle avoidance problems for the climbing robot in 3D building environments.