Obstacle avoidance with Vector Field Histogram algorithm for search and rescue robots

The capability of avoid obstacles is the one of the key issues in autonomous search-and-rescue robots research area. In this study, the avoiding obstacles capability has been provided to the virtula robots in USARSim environment. The aim is finding the minimum movement when robot faces an obstacle in path. For obstacle avoidance we used an real time path planning method which is called Vector Field Histogram (VFH). After experiments we observed that VFH method is successful method for obstacle avoidance. Moreover, the usage of VFH method is highly incresing the amount of the visited places per unit time.