Autonomous navigation of a nonholonomic mobile robot in a complex environment

This paper presents a new path planning algorithm for the autonomous navigation of a nonholonomic mobile robot. The environment in which the robot evolves is unknown and encumbered by obstacles. The goal of the robot is to move towards the arrival point (which is known) by avoiding the obstacles. The path planning algorithm recomputes a new trajectory whenever a new obstacle is detected. The planned trajectory takes account of the physical constraints of the robot (speed saturation, kinematic robot model, nonholonomic constraint). The trajectory of the robot is obtained by optimizing a problem of optimal control under constraints. The resolution of this problem is done by using the flatness property of the system, which transforms the initial optimization problem into a nonlinear dynamic programming problem. The problems of the local minima are solved by using a supervisor. Our algorithm will be compared with another algorithm of the literature in order to highlight its effectiveness. Simulation results will be presented to illustrate the good performance of the algorithm for robot navigation in a complex environment.