Sensor-based navigation of a car-like robot based on Bug family algorithms

This article presents a sensor-based navigation algorithm for 3-degree-of-freedom car-like robots with a nonholonomic constraint. Similar to the classical Bug family algorithms, the proposed algorithm enables the car-like robot to navigate in a completely unknown environment by only using range sensor information. The car-like robot uses the local range sensor view to determine the local path so that it moves toward the goal. To guarantee that the car-like robot can approach the goal, the two modes of motion are repeated, termed as motion-to-goal and wall-following. The motion-to-goal behavior lets the robot directly move toward the goal and the wall-following behavior makes the car-like robot circumnavigate the obstacle boundary until it meets the leaving condition. For each behavior, the nonholonomic motion for the car-like robot is planned in terms of the turning radius at each step. The proposed algorithm is implemented with a real robot and the experimental results show the performance of the proposed algorithm.