Navigation of an autonomous vehicle using an electrostatic potential field

This paper proposes a solution to the path planning problem for an autonomous vehicle utilizing a true electrostatic potential field developed through a resistor network which is representative of the environment. The function which generates the potential field is taken from a naturally occurring potential field, as opposed to an artificially created potential function. The result of the natural potential function is a field which has local minima only at locations chosen by the implementation (places of applied current source) and generates paths in a real time frame, starting at the initial position of the vehicle and terminating at the goal position. Simulation and real-time experiments were carried out to test the developed implementation.