Moving Robots in Unknown Environments Using Potential Field Graphs

The purpose of this research paper is to introduce a new navigation algorithm for Robot Operating System (ROS) based robots which will allow complete autonomous traversal in any given indoor environment. Turtle bot3 burger bot is the sample robot chosen for this project. This will be equipped with a Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) scanner with the default settings, ultrasound, Intel Real Sense camera, etc. Environment information gathered via these sensors will be sent into a remote computer for processing since the raspberry pie micro-controller with the turtle bot burger is not enough to carry out a high computation-intensive task. Once the information is received series of tasks will be carried out by the remote personal computer before executing the newly developed navigation algorithm. The data from the LIDAR scanner help to generate a 2-dimensional(2D) potential field graph. Then it will later be used for path planning by navigation algorithm. Furthermore, the Real sense camera is used for object boundary detection to produce more accurate data for the navigation algorithm. Once all the data proceed, data will return to the robot, where the navigation algorithm will start execution in parallel with a recovery behavior algorithm and scan algorithm. The recovery behavior algorithm is responsible for guiding the robot to face away from an obstacle in an event where the predetermined path is obstructed. Furthermore, it is responsible for maintaining accurate data in the cost map. Subsequently, the scanning algorithm will be used to generate maps.