Flexibility Optimized Control for Robot Efficient Moving in Corridors Based on Viability Theory

The speed of mobile robots moving in corridors is important for the efficiency of material transportation. This paper proposes a novel control method based on the viability theory for optimizing the flexibility of robots passing through narrow corridors. The viability theory can take both environmental constraints and robot dynamical limitation into account simultaneously. The viability of a straight corridor is first analyzed. Then, this analysis is extended to the corner. With these two typical environments, a general corridor working scenario for a mobile robot can be formulated. Through the viability analyses, the largest safety area of the corridor is provided with respect to the robot traveling at a high speed. Furthermore, with the facility of viability, a flexibility optimized control is derived by modifying a general model predictive control framework. The simulation results validate that the proposed flexible control method is secure, accurate, efficient, and lower computational burden. With these properties, this method can also be applied in the area of autonomous vehicle control.