**4. Aim of the book and its organization**

Realizing the importance of the path planning topic for autonomous vehicles and robots, this book is written. With the open-access publication concept, the book is hoped to give the introductory ideas to the researchers and the general audience about the topics. It is co-edited by researchers who have worked extensively in the field of autonomous vehicles and robots from Finland, Turkey, USA, Canada as well as Malaysia.

It is important to be mentioned that this book does not aim to solve and highlight each of the available PP issues. But instead, it tries to present as many topics and issues as possible to give the wide idea of path planning. As automation of the vehicles does not only cover the road vehicles, the book will also cover the autonomous vehicle for the off-road, military, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Despite the different type of vehicle and robot, the ethos of the discussions can still be adapted to the varied platforms.

## **5. Conclusion and expectations**

We hope this introductory chapter and the book will be able to indicate and give ideas on the issues related to PP topics, where the authors explore the topics of PP in the context of road vehicles, robots, off-road scenario, multi-robot motion, and UAVs.

For further reading following the discussions in this book (which serve as the introductory ideas for new researchers), we are recommending the topics of path planning as an active safety feature of AV, which includes the collision avoidance theme, among many others. We believe the knowledge of path planning will help researchers in developing safer collision avoidance system for AV.

Concluding, for a wide implementation of AV to be seen, the questions are not limited to "Can it be done?" but instead, the real question is "How do we do it safely?". And the discussion of PP is one of the prerequisites of a safe AV. With the open access nature of the book, it is hoped that the discussion reaches as much as possible audience.
