ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Dubins path

Imagine you are drawing a path on a piece of paper while riding a tricycle. Now, the path you draw must follow certain rules - it must be continuous, meaning there are no gaps or breaks; it must always go forward, meaning you can never reverse direction; and it must have a minimum turning radius, meaning you can't make sharp turns.

Dubins path is a special kind of path that satisfies all these rules, but also has the shortest possible distance between two points with a given turning radius. It is named after mathematician Lester Dubins who came up with the concept.

Think of it this way - imagine there are two points A and B that you want to connect with your tricycle, but there is a large obstacle in the way that you cannot go through. So you have to go around it. But you want to do it in the shortest way possible. Dubins path tells you exactly how to do that.

The path you draw will have three parts - a straight line segment, a circle segment, and another straight line segment. The first line segment takes you from point A to the start of the circle. The circle segment is where you turn around the obstacle, with the radius of the circle being the minimum allowed turning radius. Finally, the second line segment takes you from the end of the circle to point B.

So, in summary, Dubins path is a special kind of path that follows certain rules and has the shortest possible distance between two points with a given turning radius. It is useful in many applications, such as robotics and autonomous vehicles, where you want to navigate around obstacles efficiently.