Optimal Trajectory Generation for Car-type Mobile Robot using Spline Interpolation∗∗This work is carried out under the research project grant sanctioned under the WOS-A scheme by Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the spline based trajectory generation and motion planning in a 1:10 scale down prototype of a car. The car type vehicle can be modelled as a nonholonomic system with constraints on sideways movement. The spline based trajectory generation gives us continuous, smooth and optimized path trajectories. The motion planning algorithm is based on the nonholonomic model of a car-type robot which is differentially flat in nature. Our contribution lies in the development of spline based trajectories which overcome the parametric singularities arising from the differential flatness based approach. The spline trajectories also take care of the singularities which are otherwise observed in the optimization process if the cubic polynomial based interpolation is implemented. The hardware implementation for a prototype of a car type model is also presented. Using the concept of differential flatness, we derive control inputs which steer the vehicle along this trajectory.