Circular ARC-Based Optimal Path Planning for Skid-Steer Rovers

During a path, skid-steer rovers' power consumption is highly dependent to their turning radius. For example, a point turn requires a lot of energy compared to the straight line motion. Accordingly, in the path planning for these kind of rovers, turning radius is the main factor that should be considered explicitly. In this paper, a new approach of path planning for the skid-steer rovers is proposed. The idea is to use paths that are constructed from circular arcs. Accordingly, the radii of the circular arcs can be determined to obtain an energy efficient path. In other words, the conditions in which a simple circular arc-based path is energy efficient are analytically investigated. Therefore, the proposed method in this paper, is the stepping stone to find globally optimal paths (energy efficient paths) for skid-steer rovers while using the general arcs.