Real-time kinematic navigation of a mobile robot among moving obstacles with guaranteed global convergence

Abstract

The paper presents a novel reactive algorithm for safe navigation of mobile robots in uncertain complex dynamic environments. The proposed law is computationally non-demanding, directly converts the current observation into the current control, and does not require measurements of the velocities, shapes, or orientations of the obstacles. It is applicable to scenes with time-varying and deforming obstacles whose shapes and motions are unknown. Under the proposed reactive algorithm, the robot efficiently seeks a safe global path through a complex scene so that the overall robot's drift is perpetually in the desired direction despite of possible sideways obstacle avoidance maneuvers. A mathematically rigorous analysis of this law is provided, its performance is confirmed by computer simulations.