Path planning of a mobile robot using solid modeling techniques on potential fields

This paper presents a systematic approach for structuring potential fields in the free workspace of a mobile robot based on solid modeling concepts. The robot is considered as a solid object with volume and mass inside an artificial potential field which represents the free space. The applied force and torque to the robot is determined in order to find the direction and the magnitude of the translation and the angle of rotation respectively. A search method based on a modified simulated annealing is introduced to determine the path from the initial to the goal configuration where the robot is guided to the global minimum of the potential field avoiding the trap in local minima. Simulated experiments show the efficiency of the proposed approach and the paper concludes with the discussion of the results and hints for future work.