IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 44, NO.

2, APRIL 2019 331

Obstacle Avoidance Using Multiobjective

Optimization and a Dynamic Obstacle Manager
Michael R. Benjamin , Member, IEEE, Michael Defilippo , Member, IEEE, Paul Robinette, Member, IEEE,
and Michael Novitzky, Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper describes a set of software modules and

algorithms for obstacle avoidance. The approach described here is
designed to work in conjunction with any path planning method
that generates a viable sequence of waypoints, with obstacle avoid-
ance regarded as a local deviation of the planned path of points.
The helm architecture used here will temporarily spawn a new
obstacle avoidance behavior for each near detected obstacle, and
generate a maneuvering objective function to avoid the obstacle.
Once the vehicle passes the obstacle, the helm deletes the behav-
ior and frees its memory space. The helm, obstacle manager, and
obstacle avoidance behavior are described here. This software ar-
rangement was used by the MIT 2014 RobotX team, and will be
included in the next software release of the open source MOOS-IvP
marine autonomy project.
Index Terms—Autonomous systems, intelligent robots, mobile
agents unmanned autonomous vehicles.

I. INTRODUCTION
N PATH planning, a vehicle for a transit through an obstacle
I field, the obstacles may be regarded as input to the planner.
Often not all the obstacles and their locations are known at the
outset of the mission and are only discovered as the vehicle and
its sensors approach. One approach would be to replan a full
path given the new information. Another approach is to simply
make local repairs to the original path as obstacles and their
locations become known. The latter is the approach taken in
work presented in this paper. Of course, it does not preclude Fig. 1. Robot is proceeding on a path represented by set of waypoints. As
the first approach, but merely gives the autonomy designer a objects come in to the sensor range, an obstacle avoidance behavior is spawned
for each obstacle, resulting in a locally repaired path through the field. The
convenient and scalable way to make minor repairs to a path image shows the 2014 RobotX vehicle proceeding through the obstacle field
plan. This may be appropriate, for example, in a marine vehicle during the final competition. The waypoint path was simply the path through
that comes upon a previously unknown light buoy, lobster buoy, the appropriate pair of starting buoys, continuing through the appropriate pair
of exit buoys. In between, the robot simply dodged obstacles as they became
or other detected near-in hazards while underway. known through LIDAR processing and the obstacle manager.
The architecture used on the marine vehicle reported in this
paper is a behavior-based architecture module called the IvP
Helm. The helm contains behavior modules that work in coor- iors instantiated, one for each obstacle, each influencing a local
dination to control the heading and speed of the vehicle. Obstacle repair to the prevailing mission path if needed. The obstacle
avoidance is comprised of multiple obstacle avoidance behav- avoidance behaviors are spawned as the autonomy system be-
comes aware of their existence and location. And the behaviors
automatically die off and free computational resources as the
Manuscript received April 20, 2018; revised August 21, 2018; accepted Jan-
uary 27, 2019. Date of publication March 8, 2019; date of current version April obstacles fade from the vehicle. This paper will also describe a
12, 2019. This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, Code 311 set of algorithms implementing an obstacle manager that works
(Dr. B. Kamgar-Parsi and Dr. D. Wagner), on multiobjective optimization under in coordination with the helm to ensure the instantiation and
Grant N00014-15-1-2227. (Corresponding author: Michael R. Benjamin.)
Guest Editor: T. Curtin. later deletion of behaviors corresponding to obstacles.
The authors are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Mas- The obstacle avoidance behaviors and obstacle manager de-
sachusetts Institute of Technology, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence scribed in this paper were deployed by the 2014 MIT/Olin
Lab, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA (e-mail:,mikerb@mit.edu; mikedef@mit.edu;
paulrobi@mit.edu; novitzky@mit.edu). RobotX team in Singapore, shown in Fig. 1. In the final event,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JOE.2019.2896504 our vehicle navigated through the obstacle field, hitting one
0364-9059 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

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332
buoy. The flaw that contributed to this one collision has been
fixed, and discussed in a later section, and further improvements
to the code have since been added. The algorithms and software
described in this paper will be included in the next release of the
open source MOOS-IvP project [9], planned for Spring 2019.
The previous release in July 2017 contains the IvP Helm and
the general marine autonomy codebase used by our lab since
the 2014 competition.
The obstacle avoidance path planning approach described
here will only repair a current waypoint path of longer time
scale. In this regard, it is similar to path repairing approaches
introduced in early behavior-based architectures, such as [63],
[96], [100], and [101]. In our case, obstacle avoidance is rec-
onciled with the original waypoint plan by using multiobjective
optimization, not vector summation as in [63], and not with
action voting as in [101]. The IvP Helm uses a form of multiob-
jective optimization, the IvP model, that reasons over dependent
variables and is more efficient than the brute force evaluation of
[96] or [100].
The IvP Helm was originally written for the marine robotics
science community. In this class of applications, it is rare to find
missions where dynamic global path planning through a dense
field of previously unknown obstacles is necessary. In missions
involving broad area search, perhaps lawn mower style patterns
need to account for obstacles or keep out zones. In missions
involving transiting between ports, path planning may involve
routing around islands, channels, or bridges.
Dynamic obstacle avoidance is more likely to take the form of
avoiding a channel buoy, bridge pylon, or flotsam while largely
adhering to the series of waypoints generated offline or by a
mission planner. A strategic assumption was made by our team
for RobotX 2014 that the obstacle field would not contain dead
ends, i.e., local minima. Our strategy was to find the start and
end gates using our vision and light imaging, detection, and
ranging (LIDAR) sensors, plot a straight line path through the
field, and use obstacle avoidance where necessary to adjust that
path to the end gates. Unmanned surface vehicle (USV) global
path planning is not uncommon, typically using an occupancy
grid method as in [65], using an A* path planner guaranteed to
not produce dead end paths. This type of path planner was also
used previously in RobotX in [58] and [111].
II. HELM ARCHITECTURE
The IvP Helm is a single software application running on our
marine robotic platform, alongside several other applications.
It has the distinction of being the application that determines
the sequence of desired headings and speeds that determine the
path of the robot. Sensor processing, path planning, navigation,
control, data logging, etc., are implemented in separate applica-
tions. On our robot, each of these applications is implemented
using the MOOS middleware. MOOS is a publish–subscribe
architecture with individual software applications communi-
cating by subscribing for needed information and publishing
processed information. A sensor application, for example, may
be attached to a LIDAR sensor and publish point cloud infor-
mation. Another application may subscribe to this and pub-
lish labeled clusters representing distinct objects. MOOS is an
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IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 44, NO. 2, APRIL 2019
open source project maintained by Oxford [79]. The MOOS-IvP
project is a collection of marine autonomy software applications
using the MOOS architecture, plus the IvP Helm that imple-
ments a behavior-based architecture within a single application,
pHelmIvP, [9].
MOOS-IvP has two kinds of software modules: MOOS appli-
cations and IvP Helm behaviors. This paper describes a single
MOOS application, the obstacle manager, and a single behavior,
the avoid obstacle behavior. The MOOS-IvP codebase has been
deployed on several types of unmanned surface vehicle robots
[12], [18], [20], [23], [26], [29], [32], [35], [36], [44], [45],
[48], [59], [60], [69]–[71], [86], [95], [99], [106], [108], [112],
[119]. It has also been deployed on underwater platforms [1]–
[6], [10], [11], [13]–[17], [19]–[22], [24], [25], [27], [28], [30],
[31], [33], [34], [37]–[43], [45]–[57], [60]–[62], [64], [66]–[68],
[72]–[78], [80]–[85], [87]–[94], [97], [98], [102]–[105], [107],
[109], [110], [113]–[118], [120], [121].
A. IvP Helm As a MOOS Application
The helm is a MOOS application, technically no different
than any other MOOS application. All the information involved
in vehicle trajectory decisions comes via mail from other MOOS
applications. All helm output also is in the form of mail con-
sumed by other applications. This is conveyed in Fig. 2. The
helm’s first action upon reading mail is to update a local in-
formation buffer. All behaviors get their information from this
buffer. The mission mode is also set from this buffer and deter-
mines which behaviors may be active on the current iteration.
Most (static) behaviors are configured and instantiated at the
beginning of the mission. Other behaviors may be configured
as templates and are spawned upon sensed events. It is at this
stage, upon reading mail and updating the information buffer,
that the helm also looks for certain kinds of mail, described later
in Section II-D that may result in the spawning of new behaviors.
Before the end of the helm iterate loop, a behavior has the
opportunity to declare itself completed. The helm will delete
and free the memory of completed behaviors. The spawning
and deletion of obstacle avoidance behaviors is one of the focus
topics of this paper and coordinated via the obstacle manager de-
scribed in Section III, via the standard mechanism for updating
and spawning behaviors described in Sections II-C and II-D.
B. IvP Helm Decision Space and Objective Functions
The decision space is the set of possible decisions available
to the helm. It is a configuration parameter, but typically for
surface vehicles, it is comprised of 360 possible heading values
and a dozen or so possible speed choices. The decision variables
are regarded as coupled: choices are made from a single two-
dimensional space of possible heading and speed pairings, rather
than a choice made for speed followed by a choice for heading.
Behaviors in the IvP Helm produce objective functions de-
fined over the helm decision space. Each function is piecewise
linearly defined, where each piece represents a locally linear ap-
proximation of an underlying utility function. The utility func-
tion is unique to each behavior given the state of the vehicle, the
sensed environment, and the goal associated with the behavior.
For example, the objective function on the right in Fig. 3 was
BENJAMIN et al.: OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE USING MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION AND A DYNAMIC OBSTACLE MANAGER 333

Fig. 2. Helm autonomy loop: (1) Mail is read from the MOOSDB. It is parsed and stored in a local buffer available to the behaviors. (2) Vehicle mission mode
is set, determining which behaviors may be active on this iteration. (3) Each behavior is queried for its contribution and may produce an IvP function and a list
of variable-value pairs to be posted to the MOOSDB at the end of the iteration. (4) Objective functions are resolved to produce an action, expressible as a set of
variable-value pairs. (5) All variable-value pairs are published to the MOOSDB for other MOOS processes to consume.

Fig. 3. Two example IvP objective functions: On the left is collision avoidance objective function for avoiding a contact crossing just crossing the port side beam
of the robot. On the right is an objective function for transiting to a waypoint ahead of the robot. In both cases, red indicates a preferable value for a maneuver, and
blue indicates a least preferable value for a maneuver. The blue ship outline in the center of the circle indicates the robot (or ownship) heading relative to a contact
waypoint.

produced by a waypoint behavior proceeding to a point directly
ahead of the vehicle. The function on the left was produced by
collision avoidance behavior for a contact just crossing the port
side beam of the robot. Note that the piecewise functions often
are not comprised of uniform sized pieces. Large pieces repre-
senting plateaus in the utility function may be used as with the
large two red pieces in the example on the left. These maneuvers
represent uniform maximum utility for the maneuvers contained
in these pieces.
These functions as referred to as interval programming (IvP)
functions. IvP, as a mathematical programming model, is com-
prised of the piecewise linear representation structure and
the solution algorithm that capitalizes on this structure [7].
For a problem defined over a decision space with n deci-
sion variables (x1 , . . . , xn ), and having k objective functions
f1 (x1 , . . . , xn ), . . . , fk (x1 , . . . , xn ), with k priority weights
(w1 , . . . , wk ), the general solution form is given by

k
x∗ = argmaxx (wi · fi (x)).
i=1
The IvP solver embedded in the helm application receives the
objective function output of behaviors. A behavior developer
need only ensure that the behavior ultimately produces a syn-
tactically valid IvP objective function. The MOOS-IvP codebase
also contains utility libraries for building syntactically correct
piecewise linear IvP functions. The primary focus of the behav-
ior author is to implement an algorithm to assess the utility of
any candidate robot maneuver with respect to the behavior goals.
IvP utilities are then utilized in the behavior code to produce a
valid IvP function on each helm iteration.
C. Missions, Behaviors, and Dynamic Updates
Before vehicle deployment, a mission structure will be writ-
ten in the form of helm behaviors and their configuration. The
general mission structure is comprised of a set of mission modes
D and a set of behaviors B
(1) M = {D, B}. (2)

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334
The mode structure is comprised of m unique mission modes
and the set of behaviors with n unique behaviors
D = {d1 , d2 , . . . , dm }
B = {b1 , b2 , . . . , bn }.
Each mode is defined by a unique name and set of logic condi-
tions, whereas each behavior is defined by a unique name and
set of configuration parameters
di = {n, c1 , c2 , . . . , cn }
bi = {n, p1 , p2 , . . . , pn }.
Missions constructed in this manner are far from deterministic
since the logic conditions determining the modes are often based
on sensed events, and the behaviors themselves alter their output
based on sensed events. Furthermore, run-time adaptation is
enabled through a special behavior parameter, known as the
updates parameter. Consider a snippet of the following waypoint
behavior configuration:
name = transit_home
condition = mode = returning
pts = 0,0
speed = 2.0
updates = TRANSIT_UPDATES.
This behavior is designed to be active when the helm is in the
“returning” mode, to the home point at location (0,0), at
a speed of 2 m/s. However, the updates parameter names a par-
ticular MOOS variable, TRANSIT_UPDATES, through which
any of the initial configuration parameters may be changed. A
posting, such as TRANSIT_UPDATES=speed=3.0, would
immediately increase the returning speed of the robot.
The updates parameter allows, for example, an application
reasoning about fuel efficiency to change a behavior’s transit
speed. Or a command-and-control GUI could allow the user to
click a point in the operation area to dynamically change the
return waypoint.
D. Behavior Spawning and Deallocation
A special use of the updates parameter described above is for
the dynamic spawning of behaviors at run time. This is a key
to our implementation of obstacle avoidance described in this
paper. A behavior may be configured as a template behavior
as the example below, and naming an updates variable. Such
behaviors are not instantiated at startup, but may be spawned
upon sensor events
name = avoid
templating = spawn
updates = AVOID_UPDATES.
The helm, at each iteration of its autonomy loop, first checks if
any behavior has received mail, named by their updates param-
eter. If so, those updates are applied before further action. If the
updates variable has been written to with the name=value
component, but the name does not match the behavior name,
the helm will spawn a new behavior if templating is enabled. In
the example mentioned above, a posting of AVOID_UPDATES
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IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 44, NO. 2, APRIL 2019
= name=object_23 will prompt the helm to spawn a new
behavior named “avoid_object_23.” Once a behavior has
completed its task, by default it will be deleted and deallocated
(3) by the helm. The obstacle avoidance behavior, for example,
(4) will complete once the vehicle is beyond a certain range to the
obstacle.
III. OBSTACLE MANAGER
The obstacle manager is designed to accept LIDAR input rep-
(5) resenting sensed in-field objects, and convert a cluster of points
(6) into a polygon representation of the object. It will then post an
alert to the MOOSDB intended to spawn an obstacle avoidance
behavior in the helm, and handle later messages from the helm
when an obstacle has been resolved. These steps are described
in detail here. The name of this application is pObstacleMgr,
to be included in the next release of MOOS-IvP.
A. LIDAR Labeled Points as Input
The obstacle manager is designed to work with one or more
other applications producing tracked features. These tracked
features may be points generates by a LIDAR or some other
sensor. The obstacle manager subscribes for the MOOS variable
TRACKED_FEATURE of the form
TRACKED_FEATURE = x=23.2,y=19.8,label=47
TRACKED_FEATURE = x=22.9,y=18.2,label=47.
It is also assumed that the input will arrive with some grouping
or clustering algorithm applied to each feature, reflected in the
label field in the examples mentioned above. The obstacle
manager maintains a database in the form of a mapping keyed
on the obstacle label to a doubly linked list of features. For
each obstacle only the N most recent features are held, with new
features added to one end of the list, and old ones popped off
from the other end.
The obstacle manager may be configured to ignore incoming
features beyond a certain range to the robot, and configured to
erase features beyond a (typically larger) range to the robot. This
helps in ensuring bounded memory growth of the application as
longer missions unfold. Furthermore, the obstacle manager may
be configured to only accept features inside a given operation
area. This further aids in bounding computational resources and
may be practical in applications such as RobotX where the
obstacle field is in a known area.
B. Creation of Obstacles From Sensor Input
The obstacle manager maintains a list of points for each dis-
tinct cluster, and further maintains a single convex polygon
representing each cluster. By default, a convex hull polygon of
each cluster is maintained as shown in Fig. 4.
The convex hull is general and preferred when the object is not
of a known size or geometry. In certain cases, when information
about the object size is known a priori, the user may configure
the obstacle manager to associate a polygon of fixed size with
each cluster as shown in Fig. 5. In the case of navigating the
obstacle field in the 2014 RobotX competition, where the buoys
were known to be no more than about 1 m in diameter, the
BENJAMIN et al.: OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE USING MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION AND A DYNAMIC OBSTACLE MANAGER
Fig. 4. Convex hull polygon may be maintained by the obstacle manager for
each cluster of tracked features.
Fig. 5. Obstacle manager may also maintain a polygon of user configurable
size and geometry, centered on the average of points for a given cluster.
polygons were set to be hexagons of diameter 1 m. This helped
avoid problems when sensor outliers resulted in an unnecessarily
large convex hull polygon, perhaps over constraining the set of
allowable robot trajectories.
C. Moving Obstacles
The obstacle manager was designed to handle stationary ob-
stacles, such as buoys or bridge pylons. To handle moving obsta-
cles, such as other marine vessels, the IvP Helm uses a similar
MOOS application called a contact manager and a collision
avoidance behavior based on COLREGS protocol [8]. This is
outside the scope of this paper. For drifting obstacles, e.g., a
drifting buoy, the obstacle manager described here could be
used by choosing to configure its clustering algorithm to main-
tain polygon of fixed size as described in Section III-B. This is
preferable to utilizing the convex hull setting that would con-
tinue to grow the obstacle size as the object drifted.
D. Obstacle and Alert Management
The obstacle manager by default will register for all
tracked feature publications, and will maintain a data structure
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335
associating points and a polygon for each unique cluster, as de-
scribed above. The obstacle manager maintains a mapping from
each tracked feature key to Boolean values, indicating whether
an alert has been generated, for that key.
As an object comes within the alert range, an obstacle alert
is posted. This posting will spawn a new obstacle avoidance
behavior via the updates parameter discussed in Section II-D.
For example
OBSTACLE_ALERT = name=object_23#
pts={66,-81:69,-84:69,-87:66,
-90:63,-90:60,-87},label=23#
obstacle_key=obstacle_23.
This would result in the spawning of a new obstacle avoidance
behavior in the example of Section II-D.
E. Resolution of Alerts
The obstacle manager will generate a single alert for each
obstacle, thereafter assuming the entity that needed to know
about the obstacle has been properly notified. The helm may
at some point want to delete the obstacle avoidance behavior
registered for the alert, typically when the obstacle has been
passed and has reached a range where it is no longer a concern.
In this case, it cannot be ruled out that the robot turns and re-
encounters the obstacle. If the obstacle manager believes that the
alert has already been generated, it may not generate a new alert.
For this reason, the behavior will notify the obstacle manager
that the alert has been resolved. This is accomplished by posting
the following message, typically as an end flag of the behavior
upon completion before deletion
OBSTACLE_RESOLVED = object_23.
The object manager will update its internal table of Boolean
values to reflect that this object has been resolved. If it re-
encounters the obstacle later, a new alert will be generated
and a similar obstacle avoidance behavior will once again be
spawned to handle the obstacle. This ability to automatically
delete unused behaviors was not present in the 2014 version of
the software and the new algorithms allow for a more scalable
implementation as memory and CPU resources are completely
freed for resolved obstacles.
F. Obstacle Updates
At run time, the obstacle manager may alter its belief of the
shape or location of an obstacle as new sensor data is processed.
If an alert has been posted regarding an obstacle, that alert only
needs to be posted once. But updates to the obstacle shape or
position may need to be continuously posted by the obstacle
manager, for consumption presumably by a spawned ob-
stacle avoidance behavior. A request may be made to the
obstacle manager of the form
OBSTACLE_UPDATE_REQUEST = obstacle_key = <key>,
update_var = MOOSVar.
When or if the obstacle manager updates the polygon associ-
ated with a cluster of points, as described in Section III-B, the
obstacle manager will post an updated polygon to the named
336
Fig. 6. Obstacle avoidance behavior will grow its own priority weight from zero to the maximum weight based on range to the obstacle. The maximum weight
is a user configuration. The weight is applied to the avoidance objective function and included with other mission objectives to produce a heading-speed decision
based on (1).
MOOS variable. The <key> ensures that the right polygon
goes to the right behavior.
IV. OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR
The obstacle avoidance behavior is instantiated as a single
instance per known obstacle. It works with a convex polygon
representation of the obstacle. As it approaches the obstacle, its
priority weight ramps up from zero to the maximum configured
weight at a user-configured range to the obstacle. The behavior
regards the obstacle as having a buffer polygon around the actual
polygon obstacle. The created objective function will penalize
maneuvers that intersect the buffer polygon. If the vehicle enters
the buffer polygon, the behavior adapts the buffer polygon by
shrinking to exclude the vehicle. To avoid thrashing, the behav-
ior will at some point commit to going around the obstacle on
one side or the other, penalizing maneuvers to the other side.
A. Configuration Parameters
The behavior may be configured with the following parame-
ters.
1) polygon: A set of vertices comprising a convex polygon.
2) priority: A maximum priority weight, when the vehi-
cle is within pwt_inner_dist meters.
3) buffer_dist: A nonnegative distance, in meters, from
which to make a buffer polygon around the actual obstacle
(see Fig. 6).
4) pwt_inner_dist: A range to the obstacle, in meters,
within which the behavior will have maximum priority
weight.
5) pwt_outer_dist: A range to the obstacle, in me-
ters, beyond which the behavior will have a zero priority
weight.
6) obstacle_key: A unique key identifying this particu-
lar behavior with a particular obstacle.
7) allowable_ttc: The number of seconds beyond
which a maneuver that steers the robot on a collision
course to an obstacle is acceptable.
The priority of the behavior ramps up linearly from zero, at
the range specified by pwt_outer_dist, up to the maximum
priority weight given by the priority parameter, at a distance
of pwt_inner_dist meters.
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IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 44, NO. 2, APRIL 2019
B. Buffer Obstacle
The buffer obstacle is a convex polygon created by growing
the size of the actual obstacle polygon by an amount specified
by the buffer_dist parameter, as shown in Fig. 6. It is used
partly because there may be sensor uncertainty in the actual
obstacle size and location and to accommodate inaccuracies in
evaluating maneuvers with a holonomic vehicle model assump-
tion. For the objective function, maneuvers that intersect with
the actual obstacle and the buffer obstacle are equally penalized.
In practice, as the vehicle approaches the buffer obstacle,
it is not uncommon for the vehicle to bump inside the buffer
obstacle a bit, due to the vehicle’s limited turning ability or
external forces, such as wind or current. When this happens,
the behavior automatically adjusts the buffer obstacle to shrink
to the point where it once again does not intersect the vehicle.
As the vehicle maneuvers the buffer obstacle will automatically
re-grow to its original size (see Fig. 7).
The size of the buffer obstacle is given in meters, with a 0-m
value resulting in essentially a buffer obstacle equivalent to the
actual obstacle. The value is chosen heuristically and is a balance
between safety and the desire to not artificially overconstraint
the obstacle field to the point where there are no viable paths
remaining. If, for example, the field were twice the area with
the same obstacles, the size of the buffer obstacle would likely
have been set a bit bigger.
C. Obstacle Avoidance Objective Function
The obstacle avoidance IvP function, defined over all possible
robot heading and speed choices, (θ, v), is formed as a piecewise
linear approximation of the following function:
⎧
⎪ 100 g(xos , yos , θ, P )
⎪
⎨
f (θ, v) = 100 h(xos , yos , v, θ, P ) < tttc (7)
⎪
⎪
⎩
0 otherwise.
The function g(xos , yos , θ, P ) returns a Boolean value true if a
ray originating at the robot current position of xos , yos , in the
direction of the robot heading given by θ, does not intersect
the convex polygon P . The function h(xos , yos , v, θ, P ) returns
the number of seconds that a robot, at the current position of
xos , yos , traveling in the robot heading given by θ, at speed v, will
BENJAMIN et al.: OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE USING MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION AND A DYNAMIC OBSTACLE MANAGER 337

Fig. 7. Buffer obstacle may dynamically and temporarily shrink if the robot position intrudes, shrinking until the robot is no longer inside. As the robot opens
range, the buffer obstacle will be regrown back to its original size.

Fig. 8. Obstacle avoidance objective function, lower left, is combined with the waypoint objective function, upper right, to generate a collective objective
function, bottom right, guiding the robot past the obstacle to its destination. In all three objective functions, red indicates the most preferable value for a maneuver,
and blue indicates the least preferable value for a maneuver. In this case, the vehicle is maneuvering to a waypoint directly East of the vehicle in the first frame.

intersect the convex polygon P . If the robot does not intersect
the polygon on this trajectory, this function returns value of
−1. The term tttc , time to collision, is a configuration parameter
given in seconds. The corresponding IvP function, in an example
context, is shown in Fig. 8. In this case, the objective function
also shows a commitment to pass to the right of the obstacle.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The algorithms and modules described in this paper are de-
rived from, and improved from, the code base used in the 2014
RobotX competition (Fig. 9). In 2014, our robot managed to
navigate the obstacle course with mixed success, having run
over one of the buoys while otherwise operating without inci-
dent. The LIDAR processing and clustering algorithms worked
as intended and dealt with robot pitch and roll very well, and
generated a negligible amount of false positives. None of the
false LIDAR points rose to the level of spawning an unnec-
essary obstacle avoidance behavior. However, in practice, the
robot saw many more real obstacles during the entire course
than tested for in simulation. In the 2014 competition, the pro-
cess handling raw LIDAR points also used a buffer that became

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338 IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 44, NO. 2, APRIL 2019

Fig. 9. 2014 RobotX competition: The robot processed LIDAR data and clustered the points to produce polygon representations of obstacles. In the 2014
competition, the robot ran over one obstacle due to a latency in the processing chain that grew as the number of obstacles grew. That issue has been addressed in
the current version of the software.

Fig. 10. Our current simulation environment artificially generates clustered LIDAR points, rendered by the yellow dots. These are handled by the obstacle
manager to generate polygon representations of the obstacles, rendered in blue here.

overloaded with time, introducing a growing latency as the com-
petition progressed. This was exacerbated by the robot handling
LIDAR data during the rather long idle time on the water before
approaching the starting line. The inability to “forget” obstacles
introduced a further latency in the obstacle manager as the mis-
sion progressed. For the one obstacle that we hit during our final
run, a suitable obstacle avoidance behavior was spawned in the
helm almost 2 s after driving over the obstacle.
The latter issue has been addressed in the current version of
the obstacle manager. The current form of the obstacle man-
ager has the ability to drop obstacles from its memory based
on range to the robot. This has eliminated the latency issue
experience in the 2014 competition. Furthermore, logic is be-
ing added to the obstacle manager to work with an optional
user-configured operation area, outside of which sensor data are
ignored.
Our current off-water test environment simulates LIDAR de-
tected objects by generating uniformly random LIDAR points
in selected small xy regions of the operation area. The obsta-
cle manager ingests these as tracked features as described in
Section III, generating polygon representations of the simulated
obstacle. This is shown in Fig. 10.
The next release of MOOS-IvP software will also contain
missions for simulating and testing the obstacle avoidance

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BENJAMIN et al.: OBSTACLE AVOIDANCE USING MULTIOBJECTIVE OPTIMIZATION AND A DYNAMIC OBSTACLE MANAGER
Fig. 11. alpha mission distributed with the MOOS-IvP software has been augmented here to include randomly generated obstacles, to verify the functionality
of the obstacle manager and the obstacle avoidance behavior.
behavior. The mission shown in Fig. 11 is from one such exam-
ple mission with randomly generated obstacles.
Ongoing work includes the development of test harnesses
to automatically generate a large variety of transit and obstacle
avoidance missions, with tools to automatically detect and report
any obstacle collisions.
VI. CONCLUSION AND ONGOING EFFORTS
This paper presents two software modules, an obstacle man-
ager MOOS application, and an obstacle avoidance behavior
in the IvP Helm architecture. This behavior works in conjunc-
tion with other marine mission behaviors by producing a robot
obstacle avoidance objective function and the use of multiob-
jective optimization in the helm. The separate implementation
of the two modules allows independent development and their
use with other similar modules as they evolve.
Both of these modules were used, in beta form, during the
2014 RobotX competition. Each had known flaws in their beta
versions that have been fixed and improved in the versions de-
scribed here. Both will be available in the next public release of
the MOOS-IvP software expected in the Spring of 2019.
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Michael R. Benjamin (M’03) received the B.S. and
M.S. degrees in computer science and cognitive sci-
ence from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
USA, in 1988 and 1991, respectively, and the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Brown
University, Providence, RI, USA, in 1998 and 2002,
respectively.
He is currently a Research Scientist with
the Department of Mechanical Engineering and
the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
Cambridge, MA, USA. Prior to coming to MIT, he was a Research Scientist
with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Newport, RI, USA. Since the Spring
of 2012, he has developed and taught a new course in unmanned marine vehicle
autonomy at MIT to undergraduate and graduate students, and has led the startup
of a new laboratory facility for marine autonomy on the Charles River on the
MIT campus. In 2005, he founded an open source project named moos-ivp.org
comprising dozens of marine autonomy applications including the IvP Helm for
autonomous decision making and COLREGS autonomy on unmanned surface
vessels. His software is used on different types of unmanned marine vehicles
around the world. His research focus is on autonomy algorithms and software
for unmanned marine vehicles.
Dr. Benjamin was the recipient of the 2005 NAVSEA Scientist of the Year.
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University. Downloaded on November 26,2020 at 09:53:51 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE JOURNAL OF OCEANIC ENGINEERING, VOL. 44, NO. 2, APRIL 2019
Michael Defilippo (S’11–M’12) received the B.S.
degree in electrical engineering from Suffolk Uni-
versity, Boston, MA, USA, in 2013. He is currently
working toward the M.S. degree in computer sci-
ence at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA,
USA.
He is currently a Research Engineer with the Au-
tonomous Underwater Vehicles Laboratory, MIT Sea
Grant, Cambridge, MA, USA. He has worked on
diverse projects, such as developing an underwater
wireless recharging system for underwater sensors to
autonomous surface vehicles. Prior to working at MIT, he was with the U.S.
Air Force and was stationed around the United States and Europe. His research
focus is in applications of marine robotics and associated technologies above
and below the water line.
Paul Robinette (S’07–M’08) received the B.S. de-
grees in physics and computer engineering and the
M.S. degree in computer engineering from Missouri
University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO,
USA, in 2008 and 2010, respectively, and the Ph.D.
degree in robotics from Georgia Institute of Technol-
ogy, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 2015.
He is currently a Research Scientist with the De-
partment of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA,
USA. Prior to working at MIT, he was a Research
Engineer with Georgia Tech Research Institute working on multi-UAV au-
tonomy for swarms of up to 30 fixed-wing aircraft. He has worked on the
underwater Yellowfin robot, numerous ground robots including an emergency
guidance robot, and both fixed-wing and rotary aerial robots. His human–robot
experiments have involved more than 2000 participants. His research focuses
on human–robot trust in time-critical situations.
Michael Novitzky (M’14) received the B.A. de-
gree in psychology from Colorado College, Colorado
Springs, CO, USA, in 2003, the M.S. degree in elec-
trical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech,
Atlanta, GA, USA, in 2014, the M.S. degree in com-
puter science Georgia Institute of Technology (a.k.a
”Georgia Tech“), Atlanta, Georgia, USA, in 2009,
and the Ph.D. degree in robotics from the Georgia
Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in 2015.
He is a Research Scientist with the Department of
Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA. He joined MIT in 2015 as a Postdoc-
toral Research Associate with the Laboratory for Autonomous Marine Sensing
Systems. His research focuses on multirobot systems in the marine domain and
human–robot interaction in stressful environments. Prior to working at MIT, he
was a Graduate Research Assistant at both Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech
Research Institute, working on heterogeneous multirobot systems including a
team of autonomous humanoid soccer playing robots, autonomous air–ground
robot team, and marine surface and subsurface robots.
Dr. Novitzky is a member of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.