Robust Robot Navigation using Polar Coordinates in Dynamic Environments

Abstract

This paper presents robust robot navigation using polar coordinates in dynamic environments based on our previous work which was to move toward a target while avoiding static and dynamic obstacles. It utilized vector polar histogram (VPH) with velocity obstacle (VO) for the navigation and obstacle avoidance but had difficulties in detecting dynamic obstacles and reaching the target accurately. To overcome those problems, polar scan matching (PSM) is combined with our previous work. It allows the robot to localize its pose more correctly, which causes an improvement of dynamic obstacle detection. Simulations are performed to verify that our approach outperforms other conventional navigation methods in terms of obstacle avoidance and reaching the target accurately.