A new gap-based collision avoidance method for mobile robots

Abstract

This paper presents a new concept, the “Directly Navigable Gap”, for reactive obstacle avoidance. A directly navigable gap DNG is defined as the gap that a robot can safely navigate through by executing only a single motion command. With this concept, it has been possible to achieve navigation in unknown cluttered environments, similar to the gap-based obstacle avoidance methods (e.g the Nearness-Diagram Navigation). Compared to these methods, however, our approach avoids the limitation of being prone to oscillatory and unstable motion, improving their navigation performance, especially in narrow spaces. Experimental results are presented to verify the outstanding performance of the proposed DNG approach. Moreover, a discussion and comparison with existing gap-based methods is reported where the DNG approach generates less-oscillatory, safer, and faster trajectories than its counterparts.