Exact robot navigation using artificial potential functions

A methodology for exact robot motion planning and control that unifies the purely kinematic path planning problem with the lower level feedback controller design is presented. Complete information about a freespace and goal is encoded in the form of a special artificial potential function, called a navigation function, that connects the kinematic planning problem with the dynamic execution problem in a provably correct fashion. The navigation function automatically gives rise to a bounded-torque feedback controller for the robot's actuators that guarantees collision-free motion and convergence to the destination from almost all initial free configurations. A formula for navigation functions that guide a point-mass robot in a generalized sphere world is developed. The simplest member of this family is a space obtained by puncturing a disk by an arbitrary number of smaller disjoint disks representing obstacles. The other spaces are obtained from this model by a suitable coordinate transformation. Simulation results for planar scenarios are provided.<>