Collision avoidance control with steering using velocity potential field

It is expected that a collision avoidance system based on steering control could help avoid collisions even in cases where a collision cannot be avoided by braking only. For realizing steering-based collision avoidance, accurate environmental recognition and rapid motion planning in a highly dynamic environment are needed. The velocity potential field control method, which was proposed for mobile robot motion planning, has the advantages of a very low computation cost, even in dynamic environments with moving obstacles without any deadlock. In addition, the method generates the desired velocity vector to be followed but vehicle trajectory. With this feature, avoidance velocity vector is generated in realtime even in the case that the obstacles are moving and their movements cannot be anticipated. Thus, the present study proposes a collision avoidance method with steering control by generating a trajectory for obstacle avoidance using local environmental recognition based on application of the velocity potential field approach. In addition, a parameter determination method for the velocity potential function is derived. A preview steering control method for following the derived velocity vector is proposed. The simulation results obtained using vehicle dynamics software demonstrate that the proposed method can generate appropriate obstacle avoidance trajectories, even for moving obstacles, and the derived velocity vector can be tracked by an automobile.