Receding horizon control for mobile robot path planning in unknown dynamic environments

Path planning is one of the critical issues in mobile robot applications. Traditional methods for path planning in unknown dynamic environment generally plan one step rather than multiple controlling steps. This paper proposes an approach with multiple controlling steps which integrates receding horizon control (RHC) for mobile robot path planning in which the obstacle avoidance problem is converted into mathematic constraint. Besides, the distance from target to robot is optimized through involving a quadratic cost function. Finally, a quadratic constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) is generated, from which a sequence including multiple control steps is easily obtained. Based on the proposed approach, simulations are demonstrated to verify the effectiveness of the novel method.