Path Traversal Around Obstacles by a Robot using Terrain Marks for Guidance
Rabindra Pannu · OhioLink ETD Center (Ohio Library and Information Network) · 2011
The problem of autonomous robots avoiding obstacles while traversing a terrain requires efficient algorithms.There has been much research work done for the cases where the locations of obstacles are known before the path is planned.We present here an algorithm for the case in which the robot has no prior knowledge about the locations of the obstacles.The robot starts its navigation knowing the coordinates of the start and the destination points and adjusts its path as it encounters obstacles.Many existing algorithms are designed for the contexts in which the robot determines its location based on information provided by either the GPS system or an overhead camera.Our algorithm has been developed for the context in which the robot determines its (x, y) coordinates based on the grid marks on the terrain, and does not depend on the global systems for positioning cues.We have shown that our algorithm can successfully traverse the terrain for most of the situations even though there are some exception cases in which the robot gets stuck while there still is a possible path through the maze of obstacles.The robot also returns to the starting location, navigating only the shortest path running through the cells navigated while going towards the destination.This thesis describes the algorithm, implementation details for the Khepera robot used, and the results obtained with our algorithm.