Reactive Path Planning in a Dynamic Environment

This paper deals with the problem of path planning in a dynamic environment, where the workspace is cluttered with unpredictably moving objects. The concept of the virtual plane is introduced and used to create reactive kinematic-based navigation laws. A virtual plane is an invertible transformation equivalent to the workspace, which is constructed by using a local observer. This results in important simplifications of the collision detection process. Based on the virtual plane, it is possible to determine the intervals of the linear velocity and the paths that lead to collisions with moving obstacles and then derive a dynamic window for the velocity and the orientation to navigate the robot safely. The speed of the robot and the orientation angle are controlled independently using simple collision cones and collision windows constructed from the virtual plane. The robot's path is controlled using kinematic-based navigation laws that depend on navigation parameters. These parameters are tuned in real time to adjust the path of the robot. Simulation is used to illustrate collision detection and path planning.