Path Planning for a Mobile Robot to Avoid Polyhedral and Curved Obstacles

Path Planning for a Mobile Robot to Avoid Polyhedral and Curved Obstacles

  Potential applications of mobile robots range from civilian (autonomous driverless cars and assistive robots for the physically challenged) to industrial (cooperative mobile robots in an assembly factory), to defence (unmanned bomb disposal robots). Some of the main aspects of efficient mobile robot systems are to effectuate path planning, avoid collision with obstacles, and determine the shortest destination distance and minimum execution time. Path planning is mainly concerned with providing a feasible and efficient path to accomplish a given task. Most path planning algorithms achieve one criterion at the expense of the other. This paper presents an algorithm based on roadmap construction for polyhedral and curved obstacles with the objective of minimizing travelling distance and computational time. The simulation results show that the proposed method is feasible and efficient.