In this paper, we present a formal approach to reciprocal n-body collision avoidance, where multiple mobile robots need to avoid collisions with each other while moving in a common workspace. In our formulation, each robot acts fully independently, and does not communicate with other robots. Based on the definition of velocity obstacles [5], we derive sufficient conditions for collision-free mo...

Building a collision avoidance system that can meet the safety standards required of commercial aviation is challenging. Lincoln Laboratory, in collaboration with other organizations, spent decades developing and refining the system that is in use today [1]. There are several reasons why creating a robust system is difficult. The sensors available to the system are imperfect and noisy, resultin...

This thesis describes the design of a prototyped collision avoidance sensor for small autonomous vehicles. The system is based on laser rangefinding using time-of-flight, and built using small, low-cost, off-the-shelf components. The key requirement is for terrain mapping in an urban environment on small autonomous vehicles although it can potentially be used for any application that requires r...

We present a distributed collision avoidance algorithm for multiple moving robots that is model-predictive and sampling-based. Unlike purely reactive approaches, the proposed algorithm incorporates arbitrary trajectories as generated by a motion planner running on the navigating robot and predicted trajectories of its co-agents (robots or humans). Our approach, inspired by pedestrian navigation...

This paper analyzes the performance of directional collision avoidance schemes, in which antenna systems are used to direct the transmission and reception of control and data packets in channel access protocols based on four-way handshakes to try to avoid collisions. The first analytical model to consider directional reception and the possible difference in gain between omni-directional and dir...

We address the problem of uncertainty-aware local collision avoidance within the context of time-to-collision based navigation of multiple agents. We consider two specific models that account for uncertainty in the future trajectories of interacting agents: an isotropic model which conservatively considers all possible errors, and an adversarial model that assumes the error is towards a head-on...

While interpolating between successive postures of an articulated figure is not mathematically difficult, it is much more useful to provide postural transactions that are behaviorally reasonable and that avoid collisions with nearby objects. We describe such a posture interpolator which begins with a number of pre-defined static postures. A finite state machine controls the transactions from an...

Visual collision avoidance involves two diicult subprob-lems: obstacle recognition and depth measurement. We present a class of algorithms that use particularly simple methods for each subproblem and derive a set of suu-cient conditions for their proper functioning based on a set of idealizations. We then discuss and compare two diierent implementations of the approach and discuss their perform...

In high assurance avionics systems, such as systems for flight guidance, air traffic control, and collision avoidance, compelling evidence is required that the system behavior satisfies certain critical properties. Some critical properties are functional properties, properties of the services that the system delivers. For example, when another aircraft flies too close, a collision avoidance sys...

Motivated by the design of a future autonomous, decentralized air traffic management system for runway-independent aircraft, a biologically-inspired reactive collision avoidance algorithm is developed for a simple model of managing multiple vehicle systems. Techniques using gyroscopic forces and scalar potentials result in all vehicles arriving at their destinations within a reasonable time, wi...