Smooth Motion Planning of an Omnidirectional Mobile Robot in Dynamic Environments

In this paper, a real-time smooth motion planning method for a four mecanum wheeled omnidirectional mobile robot in dynamic environments that generates a smooth collision-free trajectory is proposed. The method employs a graph-search-based path planning algorithm and a smoothing technique based on clothoids. It is suitable for real-time operation due to its computational simplicity and allows fast path replanning in case the robot encounters unknown and dynamic obstacles. Such a path is feasible for holonomic mobile robots since it does not contain sharp turns so the energy consumption is reduced. Our method is compared to the reactive model predictive control scheme in simulations. The comparison showed advantages of the proposed method in the reduced task execution time, path length, cumulative replanning time, and smooth velocity profile.