page_title: Motion planning
section_title: Concepts
hierarchical_section_title: Motion planning / Concepts
context_page_description: Motion planning, also path planning is computational problem to find a sequence of valid configurations that moves the object from the source to destination. The term is used in computational geometry, computer animation, robotics and computer games.
  For example, consider navigating a mobile robot inside a building to a distant waypoint. It should execute this task while avoiding walls and not falling down stairs. A motion planning algorithm would take a description of these tasks as input, and produce the speed and turning commands sent to the robot's wheels. Motion planning algorithms might address robots with a larger number of joints, more complex tasks, different constraints, and uncertainty.
  Motion planning has several robotics applications, such as autonomy, automation, and robot design in CAD software, as well as applications in other fields, such as animating digital characters, video game, artificial intelligence, architectural design, robotic surgery, and the study of biological molecules.
context_section_description: A basic motion planning problem is to compute a continuous path that connects a start configuration S and a goal configuration G, while avoiding collision with known obstacles.  The robot and obstacle geometry is described in a 2D or 3D workspace, while the motion is represented as a path in (possibly higher-dimensional) configuration space.
caption: Example of a valid path.