Local Obstacle-Skirting Path Planning for a Fast Bi-steerable Rover using Bézier Curves

This paper focuses on local path planning for obstacle avoidance tasks dedicated to off-road mobile robots. This approach calculates a new local path for the vehicle using a set of cubic Bezier curves once the safety distance is not respected; otherwise, the vehicle follows the global reference path which is defined off-line. Two basic steps are used to determine this new path. Firstly, some significant points that should belong to the planned path are extracted on-line according to the obstacle’s sizes and the current state of the vehicle, these points are approved as waypoints. Secondly, on-line cubic Bezier curves are computed to create a smooth path for these points such that the safety and lateral stability of the vehicle are ensured (i.e., preventing huge curvatures and wide-variation in steering angles). This path will be used as a reference to be performed by the vehicle using a constrained model predictive control. The validation of our navigation strategy is performed via numerical simulations and experiments using a fast double-steering rover.