Fluid mechanics for path planning and obstacle avoidance of mobile robots

Obstacle avoidance is an important issue for off-line path planning and on-line reaction to unforeseen appearance of obstacles during motion of a non-holonomic mobile robot along a predefined trajectory. Possible trajectories for obstacle avoidance are modeled by the velocity potential using a uniform flow plus a doublet representing a cylindrical obstacle. In the case of an appearance of an obstacle in the sensor cone of the robot a set of streamlines is computed from which a streamline is selected that guarantees a smooth transition from/to the planned trajectory. To avoid collisions with other robots a combination of velocity potential and force potential and/or the change of streamlines during operation (lane hopping) are discussed.