Unified environment-adaptive control of accompanying robots using artificial potential field

Abstract

Our research is focused on mobile robots that can accompany a person, and this paper addresses how to control the relative position of the robot to the accompanied person according to the dynamic environment. The robot is expected to move side-by-side with the person in the normal situation, but the position in front or behind the person might be better if there are some obstacles. We devised the shape of the artificial potential field of the accompanied person to smoothly control the robot position in a unified way, and obtained favorable results via simulations.