Navigation and local path planning of mobile robots with real-time map-building

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Fujimori, Atsushi^{; *} | Murakoshi, Takafumi | Ogawa, Yoshinao

Affiliations: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Hamamatsu 432-8561, Japan

Correspondence: [*] Corresponding author. Tel./Fax: +81 53 478 1064; E-mail: tmafuji@ipc.shizuoka.ac.jp.

Abstract: This paper presents a navigation technique for a sonar-equipped mobile robot in which the local map is built in real-time and is used for local path planning. The mobile robot is navigated to the goal by the proposed technique even in the complicated environments in which the robot is often trapped in a deadlock by using a reactive technique. The obtained local map can be used to build and/or update the global map of the environment. It is used to plan a desirable path for the next run. In navigation experiments using a commercial mobile robot named Pioneer-1, the proposed technique with map-building was effective in several environments, especially in complicated environments compared to a reactive navigation technique without map-building. Furthermore, The proposed navigation technique was also effective even if an unknown obstacle was placed in the environment; that is, in dynamic environments.

DOI: 10.3233/ICA-2004-11306

Journal: Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 281-288, 2004