Reports on our current effort for applying probabilistic path planning techniques to logistics and operation in huge industrial installations (e.g., power plants). We show how the specific domain constraints impose a dedicated software architecture to take advantage of the generality of probabilistic approaches. In addition, such an architecture should be compatible with existing CAD systems making critical the interface issues. We conclude with three study cases currently under development within the European project MOLOG.

Presents a variant of a probabilistic approach to motion planning. The objective is to face large, complex industrial environments for maintenance purpose. The contribution is based on a structuring of the workspace into boxes that limits the size of the graph to be searched. The algorithm was integrated in a commercial CAD system and real-size experiments are presented.