Action observation in collision-free motion planning for mobile robots

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of mutual collision avoidance of mobile robots in a narrow and uncertain environment. The minimal application of inter-robot communication is required to develop an autonomous and flexible mobile robot in such an environment. In order to reduce communication application function of action observation is introduced into a robot. A mobile robot gains more information about the local working environment by observing actions of other robots. It always tries to plan motions for avoiding a collision with its own sensory data. The effectiveness of this approach on collision avoidance is verified with simulation experiments.