Generalized velocity obstacles

— We address the problem of real-time navigation in dynamic environments for car-like robots. Our approach generalizes the concept of velocity obstacles, which have been used for navigation among dynamic obstacles, to take into account the constraints of a car-like robot. We present generalized velocity obstacles, which identify actions that will lead to a collision with a moving obstacle at some point in the future. We discuss using this concept to find actions that will allow collision free navigation in dynamic environments as well as the probabilistic completeness of our algorithm in finding a feasible action and in finding an action of some specified distance from a preferred action. Finally, we demonstrate the performance of our algorithm on a simulated car-like robot among moving obstacles.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IROS
• Authors: David Wilkie, Jur P. van den Berg, Dinesh Manocha
• Keywords: Car-like Robot, Dynamic Environments, IROS 2009, Robotics, Velocity Obstacles