A new path generation method for autonomous in-door and out-door robots

Abstract

Autonomous robot navigation is an important research field because these robots can solve problems where the human presence is impossible, dangerous, expensive, or uncomfortable. The main problem to be solved for an autonomous robot is that the environment where they have to move safely is usually not or only partially known and possibly even dynamically changing. In such situations universal navigation methods can be advantageous because they can combine the abilities of both the global and local techniques and thus can be used in any environment. In this paper, a new autonomous hybrid navigation method is introduced. The algorithm is composed of visibility graph based global navigation and simple potential field based local navigation parts. It applies a new automated graph generation method which may become necessary if, because of the observed new obstacles, a new path should be generated. The route generated by the introduced technique is quasi optimal. The presented technique offers a universal navigation technique which can successfully be used in all, known, unknown, and dynamically changing environments.