Real Time Robot Path Planning Method Based on Improved Artificial Potential Field Method

Artificial potential field method is a common method to solve real time path planning problems of robots, but this method has inherent problems: local minima traps and oscillations in the presence of obstacles and narrow passages. To overcome these two problems, this paper proposes an improved artificial potential method. A new form of repulsive force is established, which includes radial repulsive force and tangential repulsive force. The movement of the robot is controlled by velocity command where the direction of the resultant force on the robot denotes the desired direction of the robot's velocity. The parameters of the attractive force and the repulsive force are analyzed and the range of the ratio of the repulsive coefficient to the attractive coefficient is determined. The method was tested by three stages: tests by a 6DOF Simulink model of quadrotor in MAT LAB environment, tests by a 6DOF C++ model of quadrotor in gazebo and ROS environment, and tests by a DJ M100 quadrotor in experiment environment. The results show that the proposed method can avoid local minima traps and eliminate oscillations compared with traditional artificial potential field method.