Reactive Motion Control for an Omnidirectional Mobile Robot

This paper presents the developed practical approach to reactive motion control for the omnidirectional mobile vehicle of the Karlsruhe Autonomous Mobile Robot (KAMRO). The reactive control is based on the ultrasonic sensory information processing and is a supplement to the usual motion control of the vehicle. The geometrical path planner on the base of the environmental model generates global subgoals which define the coarse global path to a goal. To realize the planned motion within an environment where unknown obstacles may occur, the reactive control operates with the introduced preference functions of the vehicle and its global subgoal. The preference functions combined with the processing of sensory information provide the computation of the local subgoals leading the vehicle to its global subgoals or providing an obstacle avoidance. The developed approach is discussed and illustrated by the obtained experimental results.