Navigation & SLAM

Global Planner

A global planner is the navigation component that computes a complete path from a robot's current position to a goal using a map of the environment, employing algorithms such as A*, Dijkstra, or sampling-based planners over costmaps or roadmaps. It operates at coarse timescales and hands its path to a local planner, which handles dynamic obstacles and kinodynamic feasibility in the robot's immediate surroundings. The split is standard in stacks like ROS Navigation and Nav2.

Why it matters for physical AI

Layered planning keeps long-horizon route reasoning tractable while reacting quickly to the unexpected; the architecture persists even as learned navigation policies begin to absorb the local layer.