Real-time motion planning of car-like robots

Abstract

A neural network approach is proposed for real-time collision-free motion planning of holonomic and nonholonomic car-like robots in a nonstationary environment. This model is capable of planning real-time robot motion with sudden environmental changes, motion of a car with multiple targets, and motion of multiple robots. The proposed neural network model is biologically inspired, where the dynamics of each neuron in the topologically organized neural network is characterized by a shunting equation or an additive equation. There are only local connections among neurons. The real-time optimal robot motion is planned through the dynamic neural activity landscape of the neural network without explicitly searching over the free workspace nor the collision paths, without explicitly optimizing any cost functions, without any prior knowledge of the dynamic environment, without any learning process, and without any local collision checking procedures. Therefore it is computationally efficient. The stability of the neural network is guaranteed by Lyapunov stability analysis. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach are demonstrated through simulation studies.