Obstacle avoidance control on omnidirectional vehicle robots using range sensor

Abstract

Abstract There is a strong demand for intelligent vehicle robots in many fields. They are expected to assist in our daily lives. In order to implement them in practice, the robots should include useful functions such as path planning, navigation, and obstacle avoidance. This paper focuses on obstacle avoidance control techniques for multiple obstacles. The vehicle used as a platform is a mecanum wheel omnidirectional vehicle, which is driven on floors and includes a mounted scanner range sensor. The presented algorithm has the advantage of reducing multiple obstacle avoidance control to a single obstacle avoidance control scheme. Finally, experimental results are presented in order to evaluate the avoidance algorithms. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 172(1): 58–68, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20933