# RPT*: Global Planning with Probabilistic Terminals for Target Search in Complex Environments

- Source: arXiv cs.RO
- Published: 2026-10-28T04:00:00.000Z
- RoboHot: https://robohot.news/en/items/afl0xph2pxbn2vy88w0knlkda
- Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12701

## Summary

The paper studies the Hamiltonian Path Problem with Probabilistic Terminals (HPP-PT), whose goal is for a mobile robot to visit all candidate locations to find a target while minimizing expected path cost. The authors propose RPT*, a search method with optimality guarantees that uses dynamic programming in a new state space to bypass history dependency, along with a heuristic to speed up computation. The RPT*-based HATS system, combined with Bayesian filtering or autonomous exploration, found targets faster than baseline methods on average in both simulation and real-robot experiments.