Real-time obstacle avoidance for polygonal robots with a reduced dynamic window

In this paper we present an approach to obstacle avoidance and local path planning for polygonal robots. It decomposes the task into a model stage and a planning stage. The model stage accounts for robot shape and dynamics using a reduced dynamic window. The planning stage produces collision-free local paths with a velocity profile. We present an analytical solution to the distance to collision problem for polygonal robots, avoiding thus the use of look-up tables. The approach has been tested in simulation and on two non-holonomic rectangular robots where a cycle time of 10 Hz was reached under full CPU load. During a long-term experiment over 5 km travel distance, the method demonstrated its practicability.