ND-DWA: A Reactive Method for Collision Avoidance in Troublesome Scenarios

This paper addresses the reactive collision avoidance for mobile robots that move in troublesome (very dense, cluttered and complex) scenarios. We propose a novel method combining the Nearness Diagram (ND) method and Dynamic Window Approach (DWA). First, the method uses the ND module to simplify the difficulty of the navigation and compute the solution direction for current situation. Second, the method uses the DWA module as a trajectory tracking module, with the local goal direction from the ND module. The primary contribution of the method is to effectively move robots in troublesome scenarios at high speeds. We present results and analysis from a battery of experiments with this method implemented on a real rectangular, non-holonomic mobile robot.