It is well-known that the N-center problem is chaotic when N ≥ 3. By regularizing collisions, one can associate the dynamics with a symbolic dynamical system which yields infinitely many periodic and chaotic orbits, possibly with collisions. it is a challenging task to construct chaotic orbits without any collision. In this talk we consider the planar N-center problem with collinear centers and N ≥ 4, and show that, for any fixed nonnegative energy and certain types of periodic free-time minimizers, there are infinitely many collision-free heteroclinic orbits connecting them. Our approach is based on minimization of a normalized action functional over paths within certain topological classes, and the exclusion of collision is based on some recent advances on local deformation methods. This is a joint work with Guowei Yu.