Global dynamic window approach for holonomic and non-holonomic mobile robots with arbitrary cross-section

This paper presents an extension of current global dynamic window approaches to holonomic and nonholonomic mobile robots with an arbitrary cross-section. The algorithm proceeds in two stages. In order to account for an arbitrary robot footprint, the first stage takes the robot´s orientation explicitly into account by constructing a navigation function in the (x, y, θ) configuration space. In a second stage, an admissible velocity is chosen from a window around the robot´s current velocity, which contains all velocities that can be reached under the acceleration constraints. Fast computation over large areas is achieved by adopting multi-resolution (x, y) and (x, y, θ) planning. Several measures are taken to obtain safe and robust robot behaviour. Experimental results on our wheelchair test platform show the feasibility of the approach.