A second-order elastic flow for path planning in ℝ2.

We provide an approach of elastic flow with dynamic conditions at the knot points to resolve the path planning problem in the plane. The elastic flow is set up by a second-order semilinear parabolic system with nonlocal lower-order terms. We prove the existence of classical global solutions to the elastic flow, whose asymptotic limits provide classical solutions to the path planning problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]