VFH Based Local Path Planning for Mobile Robot

Abstract

Vector Field Histogram(VFH) and its variants are effective obstacles avoidance method for mobile robots. Under the more consideration of realistic, we proposed a new local path planning method for mobile robot in this paper. The proposed method takes global path point generated by the A* algorithm as temporary target point and adopts the basic concepts of the VFH* algorithm, the difference is mainly lies in the representation of vector magnitude of the obstacles, the determination of the threshold, the selection of the candidate direction, and the definition of the node cost function in search tree. Besides, according to the optimal obstacle avoidance direction obtained in the above steps, we also give a speed control method to control the movement of the omnidirectional mobile robot to the target point. Simulation and experiment results shows that the proposed method is suited for mobile robot moving in realistic situation.