A path planning strategy for obstacle avoidance

This paper presents an obstacle avoidance module dedicated to non-holonomic wheeled mobile robots. Chained system theory and deformable virtual zone principle are coupled to design an original framework based on path following formalism. The proposed strategy allows to correct the control output provided by a navigation module to preserve the robot security while assuring the navigation task. First, local paths and control inputs are derived from the interaction between virtual zones surrounding the robot and obstacles to efficiently prevent from collisions. The resulting control inputs and the ones provided by the navigation module are then adequately merged to ensure the success of the navigation task. Experimental results using a cart-like mobile robot equipped with a sonar sensors belt confirm the relevance of the approach.