Rapidly Exploring Random Trees
 Data structure/algorithm to facilitate path planning
 Developed by Steven M. La Valle (1998)
 Originally designed to handle problems with
nonholonomic constraints and high degrees of
freedom
Rapidly Exploring Random Trees
Algorithm:
BUILD_RRT(qinit)
1 T.init(qinit);
2 for k=1 to K do
3
qrand ← RANDOM_CONFIG();
4
EXTEND(T, qrand);
5 Return T;
Rapidly Exploring Random Trees
EXTEND(T,q)
1 qnear ← Nearest_NEIGHBOUR(q,T);
2 if NEW_CONFIG(q, qnear, qnew) then
3
T.add_vertex(qnew);
4
T.add_edge(qnear, qnew);
5
if qnew = q then
6
Return Reached;
7
else
8
Return Advanced;
9 Return Trapped;
Rapidly Exploring Random Trees
Rapidly Exploring Random Trees
 Main advantage: biased towards unexplored regions
Probability node selected for extension proportional to size
voronoi region
Rapidly Exploring Random Trees
Nice properties:
 Expansion heavily biased towards unexplored areas
of state space
 Distribution nodes approaches the sampling
distribution (important for consistency), usually
uniform but not necessarily!
 Relatively simple algorithm
 Always remains connected
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 How to use RRT in a path planner?
 RRT-Connect:
 Single shot method
 Grow two RRTs one from the start position and one from
the goal position
 After every extension try to connect the trees
 If the trees connect a path has been found
RRT-Connect Path Planner
Algorithm:
RRT_CONNECT_PLANNER(qinit, qgoal)
1 Ta.init(qinit); Tb.init(qgoal);
2 for k=1 to K do
3
qrand ← RND_CFG();
4
if not(EXTEND(Ta, qrand)= Trapped) then
5
if(CONNECT(Tb, qnew) = Reached) then
6
Return PATH(Ta, Tb);
7
SWAP(Ta, Tb);
8 Return Failure;
RRT-Connect Path Planner
CONNECT(T, q)
1 repeat
2
S ← EXTEND(T, q)
3 until not (S = Advanced)
4 Return S;
RRT-Connect Path Planner
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Variations:
 RRT_EXTEND_EXTEND
 RRT_CONNECT_CONNECT
 In CONNECT step only add last vertex to graph
 Grow more RRTs
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Analysis:
 RRT-Connect is probabilistic complete
 Distribution vertices in RRT converges toward sampling
distribution
 No theoretical characterization of the rate of converge!
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Experiments:
Average 100 trials
 Scene 1: 0.228s
 Scene 2: 5,94s
 Scene 3: 2.92s
Using 3D non incremental
collision checking algorithm
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Experiments:
 In uncluttered scenes connect heuristic 3 to 4 times
faster than other RRT-based variants
 Useful for complicated 3D scenes
 7-DOF kinematic chain, over 8000 triangle primitives
average 2 s for each motion to reach, grasp and move
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Experiments:
 over 13.000 triangles
 80 s SGI Indigo2
 15 s high-end SGI
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Conclusion:
Randomised approach that yields good experimental
performances with
 no parameter tuning
 no pre-processing
 simple and consistent behaviour
 balance between greedy searching and uniform
exploration
 well suited for incremental distance computation and
fast nearest neighbour algorithms
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 To do:
 optimise distance travelled during each step by using the
radius of a collision free ball
 use approximate nearest neighbour methods
 use incremental collision detection algorithm
 compare performance to other path planning
approaches
 identify conditions that lead to poor performance
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Issues:
 Randomness can cause great variance in runtime due to
‘unlucky instance’
RRT-Connect Path Planner
 Issues:
 Ugly paths
References
 RRT-connect: An efficient approach to single-query path planning. J.
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J. Kuffner and S. M. LaValle. In Proceedings IEEE International Conference
on Robotics and Automation, pages 995--1001, 2000
On Heavy-tailed Runtimes and Restarts in Rapidly-exploring
Random Trees. Nathan A. Wedge and Michael S. Branicky. 2008
Chapter 5: Sampling-Based Motion Planning, Planning Algorithms. S.
M. LaValle. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K.,
Rapidly-exploring random trees: A new tool for path planning. S. M.
LaValle. TR 98-11, Computer Science Dept., Iowa State University, October
1998 2006.
http://msl.cs.uiuc.edu/rrt/gallery.html
Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees in Highly Constrained
Environments. Amjad Almahairi. 2010.