Path planning in environment with moving obstacles for mobile robot

Artificial potential field method is a simple and efficient path planning algorithm for mobile robots. When it is used for avoiding dynamic obstacles, the intermittent local minimum problem and oscillation phenomenon will be emerged because only the path of mobile robots can be changed through force analysis whereas the speed of mobile robots can not be adjusted. Therefore, the real time property and maneuverability during the running process of mobile robots are greatly influenced by above problems. A novel dynamic obstacles avoiding method which called collision prediction algorithm (CPA) is proposed and it is combined with APF in order to solve the problems mentioned above. The APF is used when moving obstacles are not entering into the prediction area, otherwise, the CPA is carried out for path planning. In CPA, whether the collision between obstacles and mobile robots is happened should be judged at first. If it is happened, then the position of collision is predicted. Finally the speed of mobile robots is changed according to the prediction results so that the moving obstacles can be avoid quickly and effectively.