Path Planning Based on the Method of Integrating Adjacent Obstacles

Path planning for an autonomous mobile robot refers to using various sensors to detect its surrounding and finding a suitable path from the initial position to the target. In the current research on path planning of autonomous mobile robots, the artificial potential field method is widely applied because it is simple and concise. However, it may cause the robot to stop or circular motion of the robot in the area where obstacles are dense, that is the local minimum problem. In order to solve this problem, this paper proposes a neighbor-obstacle unifying method. It is composed of three steps. First, the position of the obstacles is detected by the sensors of the robot, and some obstacle areas can be obtained according to the distances between the adjacent obstacles. Next, a circumscribed circle is determined according to the center of each area, this circle is regarded as the integration of the obstacles. Finally, the original obstacles are replaced by the integrated one. This method can not only avoid local minimum, but also improve the efficiency of path planning. The simulation results verify the efficiency of the method.