Robot navigation balancing safety and time to goal in dynamic environments

This work addresses a technique for robot motion planning and navigation in dynamic environments. First, a model to represent the future evolution of the moving obstacles in the environment is defined in a robocentric reference, which maps the obstacle motion on the control space, the velocity-time space, of the robot. Second, a planning technique working on that model for navigation and maneuvering in this scenario is performed. The planned motion commands balance safety and time to goal criteria, applying every control sampling time a velocity command satisfying the criteria from the planned strategy. Unlike other classic reactive strategies, the novel method developed allows to plan and execute safe motions according to the further evolution of the moving objects in the robot field of view. The robot maneuvers among the obstacles using the concepts of time to collision and time to escape from the perceived moving objects. The technique is evaluated in randomly generated simulated scenarios, based on metrics defined using safety and time to goal criteria.