Smooth Path Planning by Fusion of Artificial Potential Field Method and Collision Cone Approach

Abstract

A variety of path planning methods have been developed for different purposes, such as minimum path length and minimum processing time and smoothness of the path. This paper presents a novel path planning method by fusion of artificial potential filed (APF) and collision cone approach. The proposed algorithm provides smooth path and avoids local minima problem of the existing APF. And the smoothness of the path produced from the proposed algorithm is estimated by calculating the accumulated force which occurs while a robot passes a whole path. The proposed smooth path planning also can be helpful for considering vehicle kinematics and the safety of vehicle passengers. The simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.