Perceptual navigation strategy for mobile robots intercepting ground balls

This paper presents a new human-based navigation model to guide a mobile robot to intercept ground balls. The new model consists of two strategies: the optical acceleration cancellation (OAC) model, and the lateral alignment strategy. The OAC model uses a linearly decreasing cotangent function of the gaze angle to reduce the distance between the robot and the target on the ground. It determines a set of possible robot positions on the horizontal plane at every time instant. The robot laterally aligns with the target when it moves to the side. The lateral alignment strategy determines a unique robot position at each time instant. The new navigation strategy provides a simple and fast algorithm to navigate mobile robots in an open field to intercept ground balls. Visual servo controllers were designed and simulated. A high-speed mobile robot was developed to conduct interception experiments