SHARED CONTROL FOR MOBILE ROBOT OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE

The use of robots has become more prevalent in the last several decades in many sectors such as manufacturing, research, and consumer use [18]. With such varying environments and requirements of these robots it has become increasingly important to develop systems capable of adapting and ensuring safety of the robot and surroundings. This study examines shared control as a method of obstacle avoidance for mobile robots. Shared control makes use of multiple control modes to obtain desired properties from each. This lends a wide range of applications of shared control, from assisted wheelchair operation [37] to autonomous vehicle navigation [10]. Shared control allows for highly versatile controllers and enables easier interfacing with humans. In this thesis we propose control strategies for two mobile robots: a kinematic non-holonomic wheeled robot and a dynamic quad-rotor. Lyapunov analysis is used to show stability of the systems while accounting for shared control switching. With the shared control architecture, it is proven the robots always avoid collision with obstacles. The theoretical analysis is validated with experiments which show promising results and motivate shared control as a viable solution for safe navigation in other systems