Reactive collision avoidance for multiple robots by non linear time scaling

Abstract

Reactive Collision avoidance for non-holonomic robots is a challenging task because of the restrictions in the space of achievable velocities. The complexity increases further when multiple non-holonomic robots are operating in tight/cluttered spaces. The present paper presents a framework specially carved out for such situations. But at the same time can be easily appended with any existing collision avoidance framework. At the crux of the methodology is the concept of non-linear time scaling which allows robots to reactively accelerate/de-accelerate without altering the geometric path. The framework introduced is completely independent of the robot kinematics and dynamics. As such it can be applied to any ground or aerial robot. Through this concept the collision avoidance is framed as a problem of choosing appropriate scaling transformations. We present a “scaled” variant of the collision cone concept which automatically induces distributiveness among robots. The efficacy of the proposed work is demonstrated through simulations of both ground as well as UAVs.