Performance evaluation of a geometric strategy for autonomous navigation in observable environment

Abstract

In robotics, one of multiplies problems in the last few years has been the study of the strategies to find the navigation path (path planning) of the mobile robots in statics and observable conditions. This is an open problem without predefined rules (Non Heuristic), which requiring measuring of the environment, found useful information, and to use an algorithm to make the desired path. This paper proposes a simple and efficient geometric path planning strategy supported in digital image processing. The image of the environment is processed to identify obstacles, and thus the free space for navigation. Then, using visibility graphs, the possible navigation paths guided by the edges of obstacles were drawn. Finally the A∗ algorithm was used to find a possible path. The alternative proposed was evaluated by simulation on a large set of test environments, showing in all cases their ability to find a free collision plausible path.