A Novel Path Planning Approach for Robotic Navigation Using Consideration Within Crowds

This paper presents a novel approach towards mobile robotic path planning within a pedestrian environment, focused on being considerate towards crowd members. Through predicting pedestrian movement, with ellipses used to encompass the uncertainty, a modified Voronoi diagram is proposed to create a roadmap through the environment. Predictions of pedestrian trajectories are used to generate collision-free paths that minimise congestion and are considerate to the overall crowd flow. The results demonstrate that the robot’s movement allows potential collisions to be recognised in advance and avoided before they can develop.

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