Local mapping from online laser Voronoi extraction

To navigate in complex environments, an autonomous mobile robot needs to reach a compromise between the need for reacting to unexpected events and the need for having efficient and optimized trajectories. Sensor based path planning can be used to achieve this goal. We present a new sensor based method which consist of building up local Voronoi diagrams using measurements from a scanning laser. The space is divided into regular cells, and the Euclidean distance is calculated between each cell and the objects. The cells which are equidistant to several objects belong to the Voronoi diagram. Experimental results obtained by running this algorithm are also presented. These results show that our method can be used in sensor based path planning