Optimal motion planning for minimizing energy consumption of wheeled mobile robots

This paper presents a novel approach of finding energy-efficient trajectories for mobile robots. The approach integrates new cost and heuristic functions into the conventional A* algorithm while considering ground conditions and obstacle positions. The resulting planner helps to manage obstacle avoidance and to choose intelligent displacements of the robot. A heuristic function with energy-related criterion is defined in order to generate energy-efficient paths. η³-Splines continuity property is exploited to generate smoothed energy-paths. The optimal velocity profile for minimum travel time is found by solving Sequential Quadratic Problem. A series of simulations demonstrate the energy saving efficiency of the proposed method.