Obstacle Avoidance Motion Using Elliptical Potential Field for Autonomous Robot
Koshiro MIYAUCHI, Takuma KIYONO, Junya Kobayashi, Hoshi MIKIHIRO, Yoshihiro KANEKO, Nobuaki NAKAZAWA · The Proceedings of JSME annual Conference on Robotics and Mechatronics (Robomec) · 2023
One method for obstacle avoidance motion is the potential field method, which determines a robot's movement speed and direction by assigning virtual potential fields to the target location and obstacles. Studies on the potential field method have been conducted extensively, with many defining the attractive and repulsive potential fields as spreading in a circular pattern. However, in our sequentially generated path using a circular potential field, when an obstacle appeared near the robot's side unrelated to the direction of travel, the robot made a large avoidance maneuver, resulting in unstable movement in narrow passages, for example. In this study, we developed a system for sequentially generating paths using an elliptical potential field spreading, with the aim of obstacle avoidance for autonomous mobile robots with preset waypoints. We also compared the obstacle avoidance motion in sequential path generation using a circular potential field and an elliptical potential field.