VFHF: A combining obstacle avoidance method based on laser rangefinder

Abstract

Real-time obstacle avoidance is one of the key issues to successful applications of mobile robot in the complex and unknown environment. However, now commonly used local obstacle avoidance strategies have some deficiencies. For example, VFH is superior to path planning, but it is not optimal when encountering with a obstacle which suddenly appears in front of the mobile robot. By the development of sensor technology, laser rangefinders are now widely used in the navigation of the mobile robot, which are more accurate than ultrasonic sensors. Therefore, some new algorithms have been proposed to achieve the purpose of obstacle avoidance and navigation. This paper proposes a concise and stable obstacle avoidance method named VFHF which is based on the laser rangefinder and combines VFH and VFF to compensate for the close-distance obstacle avoidance which is a inherent defect of VFH. Considering the feature of the laser rangefinder, the methods of computation and local path planning strategies of both VFH and VFF have been modified. Experiments have demonstrated the validity and the technical feasibility of the proposed methods.