Artificial Potential Field Based Path Planning for Mobile Robots Using Virtual Water-Flow Method

The artificial potential field (APF) based path planning methods have a local minimum problem, which can trap mobile robot before reaching its goal. In this study, a new method using virtual water-flow is proposed to escape local minima occurred in local path planning, which integrates virtual water-flow with a potential-field-based method to guide a mobile robot in an unknown or unstructured environment. The potential-field method coupled with virtual water-flow can navigate a mobile robot in real time. Simulations and experiments show this algorithm possesses good performance, and can overcome the problem cause by local minimum.

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