Orbital Obstacle Avoidance Algorithm for Reliable and On-Line Mobile Robot Navigation

— This paper proposes an orbital obstacle avoidance algorithm which permits to obtain safe and smooth robot navigation in very cluttered environments. This algorithm uses specific reference frame which gives accurate indication on robot situation. The robot knows thus if it must avoid the obstacle in clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Moreover, it knows the moment to go into the orbit of the obstacle and the moment to go out. These orbital behaviors are performed using adaptive limit-cycle trajectories. The later with a specific conflicting situations module permit to prevent robot oscillations , local minima and dead ends. The proposed algorithm is embedded in a specific bottom-up control architecture with stability proof given according to Lyapunov synthesis. The overall proposed structure of control allows to decrease significantly the time to reach the target. In fact, according to the proposed algorithm, robot anticipates the collisions with obstacles according to smooth local trajectory modifications. A large number of simulations in different environments are performed to demonstrate the efficiency and the reliability of the proposed control architecture.