Sensor based navigation for car-like mobile robots using generalized Voronoi graph

Our research objective is to realize sensor based navigation by car-like mobile robots. The generalized Voronoi graph (GVG) can describe a mobile robot's path for sensor based navigation from the point of view of completeness and safety. However, it is impossible to apply the path to a car-like mobile robot directly, because limitation of the minimum turning radius prevents following the non-smooth GVG. To solve the problem, we propose a local smooth path planning algorithm for car-like mobile robots. Basically, an initial path is generated by a conventional path planning algorithm using GVG theory, and it is deformed smoothly to enable car-like robots' following by maximizing an evaluation function proposed in the paper. The key topics are: definition of our evaluation function; and how to modify the GVG. We introduce a local smooth path planning algorithm based on the GVG, and explain a detail of the evaluation function. Simulation results support validity of the algorithm

Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/IROS.2001.976302
Published with permission from the copyright holder. This is the institute's copy, as published in Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2001. Proceedings. 2001 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on, 29 Oct.-3 Nov. 2001, Volume: 2, Pages 1017-1022.
Publisher URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2001.976302
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