Underwater robot navigation avoiding moving obstacles

Abstract

The mobile robot has to be able to travel to the target point by itself to accomplish its given mission. The robot should have the ability to detect the obstacles and to avoid the obstacles to travel safely. For this behavior the navigation system is essential for the mobile robot. The navigation system consists of two sub systems: the global path planner and the local path planner for the obstacle avoidance. The behavior of avoidance is usually detour the obstacle, which causes extra energy consumption. The minimization of the detour is required for the operation time of the robot. To accomplish this objective we proposed the path planning method based on the artificial potential field. In our method we can partially predict the direction of the moving obstacle, which can be considered in planning local path. The modified repulsive function by predicting the path of the moving obstacle is introduced in this paper and we conducted computer simulations to validate our method.