Authors:
Giuseppe Fedele
1
;
Luigi D'Alfonso
2
;
Francesco Chiaravalloti
3
and
Gaetano D'Aquila
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Calabria, Italy
;
2
GiPStech s.r.l, Italy
;
3
IRPI - CNR, Italy
Keyword(s):
Mobile Robots Path Planning, Obstacles Avoidance, Artificial Potentials Field Method.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
;
Mobile Robots and Autonomous Systems
;
Robotics and Automation
Abstract:
In this paper, a novel path planning and obstacles avoidance method for a mobile robot is proposed. This
method makes use of a switching strategy between the attractive potential of the target and a new helicoidal
potential field which allows to bypass an obstacle by driving the robot around it. The new technique aims at
overcoming the local minima problems of the well known artificial potentials method, caused by the summation
of two (or more) potential fields. In fact, in the proposed approach, only a single potential is used at a
time. The resulting proposed technique uses only local information and ensures high robustness, in terms of
achieved performance and computational complexity, w.r.t. the number of obstacles. Numerical simulations
and comparisons with traditional artificial potential field technique confirm a robust behavior of the method,
also in the case of a framework with multiple obstacles.