Gavrilova, Marina L.Bhattacharya, Priyadarshi2017-12-182017-12-182007http://hdl.handle.net/1880/102210Bibliography: p. 184-195Some pages are in colour.The path planning problem, in its most well-know form, is the determination of a collision­free path for a mobile agent between source and destination. For practical path planning applications, a path should be as short as possible while maintaining a certain amount of clearance from obstacles. The problem is challenging as very few existing algorithms can fully satisfy both conditions. Very recently, improving path quality has received increased attention from researchers in the areas of GIS and robotics. In the first part of the thesis, we present a novel approach of combining path length with clearance from obstacles to generate an optimal path in just O(nlogn) time. In the second part, we provide a novel algorithm to solve the weighted region problem (wrp), concerned with determining an optimal path in a weighted terrain. Our algorithm is asymptotically faster than other existing approaches to solve the wrp and generates high quality optimal paths. We also provide a full description of the developed software system and extensive experimentation performed on GIS data.xii, 195 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.engUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.master thesis10.11575/PRISM/1209