Informed RRT* @ UTIAS (IROS 2014) 

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
Autonomous Space Robotics Lab: asrl.utias.utor...
RU-vid Channel: / utiasasrl
This video shows an improvement to the popular RRT* planning algorithm that focusses the search area by eliminating some regions that cannot possibly improve the solution. It turns out we use an admissible ellipsoidal search region to do this, thereby greatly speeding up the search.
This video is associated with the following IROS 2014 paper:
Gammell J D, Srinivasa S S, and Barfoot T D. "Informed RRT*: Optimal Incremental Path Planning Focused through an Admissible Ellipsoidal Heuristic". In Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), to appear. Chicago, Illinois, 14-18 September 2014.
asrl.utias.utor...
There is also a follow-on ICRA 2015 paper that improves on this work in an algorithm called BIT*:
Gammell J D, Srinivasa S S, and Barfoot T D. “Batch Informed Trees (BIT*): Sampling-based Optimal Planning via the Heuristically Guided Search of an Implicit Random Geometric Graph”. In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), to appear. Seattle, Washington, 26-30 May 2015.
arxiv.org/abs/1...
For all our planning-related videos see our Planning Playlist on our RU-vid Channel:
• Batch Informed Trees (...