Development of Robust Path Planning Algorithm for Autonomous Mobile Robot via Virtual Obstacle

In this paper, we describe the development of a robust path planning algorithm for an autonomous mobile robot. In order to achieve safe navigation under area where obstacles move, the mobile robot has to be controlled by the dynamic path planning algorithm to avoid collision. However, depending on changed by obstacles position, the dynamic path planning algorithm frequently faces to path switching problems. In order to avoid the path switching problems in dynamic path planning algorithm, we newly introduce a virtual obstacle assignment method to suppress events occurred by the path switching problems. The effectiveness of the proposed method is proved by actual mobile robots. The validity of the proposed method is confirmed by both simulation and actual outdoor experiments