Incorporating body dynamics into sensor-based motion planning: the maximum turn strategy

Most of today's approaches to sensor-based motion planning focus on kinematic and geometric issues and ignore the system dynamics. Those few that address dynamics do so in a two-stage fashion by considering one issue at the time. This work attempts to incorporate control of body dynamics into the sensor-based motion planning process. A point mobile robot is assumed to operate in a planar environment with unknown arbitrary stationary obstacles. Based on its current velocity and sensory data about the surrounding obstacles, the robot plans its motion to locally maximize the turning angle toward the current intermediate target. An optimal braking procedure takes care of sudden potential collisions by guaranteeing a safe emergency stopping path. Given the constraints on robot's dynamics, sensing, and control means, conditions are formulated for generating trajectories that guarantee convergence and the robot's safety at all times. The approach calls for continuous computation and is fast enough for real-time implementation. Simulated examples demonstrate its performance.