Collision avoidance for mobile robots based on artificial potential field and obstacle envelope modelling

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to investigate the collision avoidance problem for a mobile robot by constructing an artificial potential field (APF) based on geometrically modelling the obstacles with a new method named the obstacle envelope modelling (OEM).

Design/methodology/approach

The obstacles of arbitrary shapes are enveloped in OEM using the primitive, which is an ellipse in a two-dimensional plane or an ellipsoid in a three-dimensional space. As the surface details of obstacles are neglected elegantly in OEM, the workspace of a mobile robot is made simpler so as to increase the capability of APF in a clustered environment.

Findings

Further, a dipole is applied to the construction of APF produced by each obstacle, among which the positive pole pushes the robot away and the negative pole pulls the robot close.

Originality/value

As a whole, the dipole leads the robot to make a derivation around the obstacle smoothly, which greatly reduces the local minima and trajectory oscillations. Computer simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Citation

Wu, Z., Hu, G., Feng, L., Wu, J. and Liu, S. (2016), "Collision avoidance for mobile robots based on artificial potential field and obstacle envelope modelling", Assembly Automation, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 318-332. https://doi.org/10.1108/AA-01-2016-008