Voronoi extraction of free-way areas in cluttered environments

Abstract

In robotic service field, safety navigation in human environments is one of the most important goals. To navigate without collision, some kind of environment representation is needed. This paper presents a new methodology to build, in real-time, compact local maps for navigation in complex indoor environments. The map is called Traversable Regions Model (TRM) and is based on Voronoi diagram techniques. The new approach is the application of Voronoi techniques in 3D environments and the previous study of tr avers ability in indoor environments. The model built allows to define safe trajectories depending on the robot's capabilities and the terrain properties, because a previous traversability study is performed with the 3D data. The methodology presented is validated in real indoor environments with the mobile manipulator MANFRED, developed in our lab.