A Collision-Free Path Planner for Articulated Mobile Robots

In previous works, we have treated the collision-free path-planning problem for a nonholonomic mobile robot in a cluttered environment. We have used a method based on a representation of the obstacles on the robot´s velocity space. This representation is called Feasible Velocities Polygon (FVP). In this paper, we have extended our work to an articulated mobile robot evolving in a cluttered environment. This robot is composed by a differential mobile robot and one or several modules that together form the trailer which are linked by off-center joints. This kind of robot is a strongly constrained system. Even in a free environment, under some circumstances, the robot may be blocked by its trailers in its progression towards the goal. The proposed approach, compared to other methods, has the main advantage of integrating anti-collision constraints between the articulated robot itself and the environment, in order to avoid and resolve dead-lock situations. To show the capabilities of our method to lead the articulated robot to the final position in a stable way, a numerical result is presented.