Release Time:2019-03-13  Hits:

Indexed by: Journal Article

Date of Publication: 2016-08-01

Journal: ASSEMBLY AUTOMATION

Included Journals: Scopus、EI、SCIE

Volume: 36

Issue: 3

Page Number: 318-332

ISSN: 0144-5154

Key Words: Collision avoidance; Artificial potential field; Obstacle envelope modelling

Abstract: Purpose - This paper aims to investigate the collision avoidance problem for a mobile robot by constructing an artificial potential field (APF) based on geometrically modelling the obstacles with a new method named the obstacle envelope modelling (OEM).
   Design/methodology/approach - The obstacles of arbitrary shapes are enveloped in OEM using the primitive, which is an ellipse in a two-dimensional plane or an ellipsoid in a three-dimensional space. As the surface details of obstacles are neglected elegantly in OEM, the workspace of a mobile robot is made simpler so as to increase the capability of APF in a clustered environment.
   Findings - Further, a dipole is applied to the construction of APF produced by each obstacle, among which the positive pole pushes the robot away and the negative pole pulls the robot close.
   Originality/value - As a whole, the dipole leads the robot to make a derivation around the obstacle smoothly, which greatly reduces the local minima and trajectory oscillations. Computer simulations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.