A Pursuit Evasion Approach for Avoiding an Inattentive Human in the Presence of a Static Obstacle

We consider a mobile robot, modelled as a Dubins’ car, following a path. In the vicinity of the path is a human, modelled as an agile point mass, and a static obstacle. The robot’s objective is to follow the path unless it is absolutely necessary to deviate so as to avoid collision with the static obstacle or human. We seek to guarantee robot’s safety, even if the human is distracted or inattentive, and thus we consider worst-case motions for the human. The resulting problem takes the form of a reversed homicidal chauffeur game, but with the addition of a static obstacle. The static obstacle can interfere with the escape route of the robot, and thus fundamentally changes the form of the game. We propose a navigation algorithm for the robot that provably guarantees safety and that attempts to delay its reaction for as long as possible. We validate the proposed approach in simulation and provide a comparison to existing collision avoidance methods.