5.6.3 Heuristics for Improving Roadmaps

The quest to design a good roadmap through sampling has spawned many heuristic approaches to sampling and making connections in roadmaps. Most of these exploit properties that are specific to the shape of the C-space and/or the particular geometry and kinematics of the robot and obstacles. The emphasis is usually on finding ways to dramatically reduce the number or required samples. Several of these methods are briefly described here.