Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics Bangkok, Thailand, February 21 - 26, 2009

Equiangular Navigation Guidance of a Wheeled Mobile Robot with Local Obstacle Avoidance
Hamid Teimoori Andrey V. Savkin
School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications The University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia h.teimoori@student.unsw.edu.au, a.savkin@unsw.edu.au

Abstract We consider the problem of navigation of wheeled mobile robot (WMR) towards an unknown target in a cluttered environment. The biologically inspired navigation algorithm is the Equiangular Navigation Guidance (ENG) combined with a local obstacle avoidance technique. The collision avoidance technique uses a system of active sensors which provides the necessary information about the obstacles in the vicinity of the robot. In order for the robot to avoid collision and bypass the enroute obstacles, the angle between the instantaneous moving direction of the robot and a reference point on the surface of the obstacle is kept constant. The performance of the navigation strategy is conrmed with computer simulations and experiments with ActivMedia Pioneer 3-DX wheeled robot. Index Terms Wheeled Mobile Robot, Biologically Inspired Navigation, Obstacle Avoidance

I. I NTRODUCTION The research on wheeled mobile robot (WMR) navigation with obstacle avoidance has gained a great deal of interest over the past few years. Mobile robots have been used to solve different encountered problems and replace, augment or support human activities in several indoor or outdoor applications, such as factory and mining automation, home and ofce assistance, interactive guide system in museum, search and rescue operation, exploration in hazardous environments and military systems. In all of these applications since the safety of the mobile robot and the people around are of prime importance, the robot should be equipped with a navigation system which combines a guidance strategy, that guides the robot towards the goal, with a collision avoidance technique, which leads the robot safely around the obstacle. Many sophisticated approaches in guidance and control of a Wheeled Mobile Robot(WMR) for target following and trajectory tracking have been proposed in the literature, including: nonlinear control [6], dynamic feedback linearizing [4], sliding mode control [14], fuzzy control [12] and neural network [3]. A real time target tracking control scheme based on fuzzy sliding-mode control strategy was suggested in [8]. A strategy in robot navigation based on proportional navigation guidance was proposed in [2] and [10] introduced
This

work was supported by the Australian Research Council

a precision guidance law with impact angle constraint for a 2-D planar intercept. However, in most of the current methods, target velocity, position, moving direction or line-of-sight angle (the angle between the reference line and the imaginary straight line starts at the robots reference point and is directed towards the targets position) are considered given, which are not always available in practice. GPS systems can provide accurate location information in outdoor settings, however they fail in indoor navigation where GPS signals can not be reliably received. Video or IR based positioning systems, similarly, are restricted to line-of-sight limitations or poor performance with uorescent lighting, direct sunlight and lack of light situations. Furthermore, in some applications the target is either too small to appear in an image frame or located behind an obstacle in indoor applications or too far from the robot in outdoor applications. In order to safely navigate and reliably operate in populated environments, on the other side, an autonomous vehicle should be able to detect and avoid the obstacles on the way towards the target. Current motion planning and obstacle avoidance strategies can be classied according to different aspects: local (when the environment is completely or partially unknown) or global (when it is totally known); Static (when all the obstacles in the environment are stationary) or dynamic (with moving and stationary obstacles); and reactive (in which the most recent sensory perceptions are used to guide the robot towards the goal) or map-based (the robot is navigated based on a given map of the environment). A comprehensive summary of the available algorithms for motion planning and their classications can be found in [5]. In this paper, we propose an approach for robot navigation, which combines a goal-directed navigation strategy with a local obstacle avoidance technique in order to guide the robot towards an unknown stationary or maneuvering target. In doing so, considering dynamic constraints of the mobile robot, i.e. bounded linear and angular velocities, we apply the Equiangular Navigation Guidance (ENG), initially proposed in [13], for the problem of robot guidance towards an unknown target using just the relative distance between the robot and target also known as line-of-sight (LOS) range.

978-1-4244-2679-9/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE

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The LOS range can be estimated by measuring the strength of the signal transmitted by the target and received at the robot position [13]. Having applied the ENG in an obstaclefree environment, the robot approaches the unknown target in a semi-equiangular spiral, whose arc-length and curvature are subjects to change with a control parameter. However, to prevent from any collision with obstacles in real time, ENG is then combined with a low level obstacle avoidance strategy. This strategy uses a system of active sensors which provide the necessary information about the obstacles in the vicinity of the robot. In order for the robot to avoid collision and bypass the enroute obstacles, the angle between the instantaneous moving direction of the robot and a reference point on the surface of the obstacle is kept constant. Having applied the proposed avoidance strategy, the robot bypasses any obstruction on the way towards an unknown stationary or unpredictable maneuvering target preserving a safety distance from the surface of the obstacle. II. P ROBLEM STATEMENT We consider a three-wheeled, non-holonomic mobile robot of Dubins car type, which moves in a horizontal plane and in an unknown environment. In a two-dimensional space, the position of the robot can be represented by a triplet PR = (XR ,YR , R ) where (XR ,YR ) is the location of the middle of the wheel base and R is the heading angle with respect to the reference line. Let VR be the linear velocity and R the angular velocity of mobile robot. A rolling-without-slippage model is assumed for the robot. The evolution model is classically given by: XR = VR cos(R ) YR = VR sin(R ) R = R (2.1)

Fig. 1.

Robot position and orientation with respect to target

which allows the robot to approach a target and simultaneously avoid the obstacles on the way while keeping a safety distance from them. III. NAVIGATION TOWARDS THE TARGET Given the robot position and orientation with respect to the target position in the polar coordination system, we dene the relative distance between the robot and target, d, and the angle between the front-direction and the target direction, , as shown in Fig. 1 d=
2 2 dX + dY

R = R R T = R T

(3.2)

where R and T are the robot and target heading angles, respectively. R is the line-of-sight angle and |R | , |T | . The robot-target motions is expressed by d = VR cos(R ) + VT cos(T ) (3.3a) VR VT R = R + sin(R ) sin(T ). (3.3b) d d Note that the kinematic equations (3.3) are only valid for non-zero values of the LOS-range, since R is undened for d = 0. Considering an obstacle-free environment, in the rst step, we apply the Equiangular Navigation Guidance (ENG) strategy in order to generate the guidance command using just the relative distance between the robot and target. The idea is to approach the target with a xed = o along an equiangular spiral, where |o | < . 2 A. Equiangular Navigation Guidance (ENG) Law We assume that the distance d(t) to the target and its derivative d(t) are both available to the robot controller. Furthermore, we assume that the robot linear velocity is constant: VR (t) VR0 > 0. (3.4) In this case, the minimal turning radius of the robot is Rmin = VR0 . max (3.5)

with U = [VR R ]T as the control vector of the mobile robot, U = V [max max ] with V, max > 0. The target may be stationary or moves in any direction. We consider the moving target as another nonholonomic mobile robot and represent its position and orientation with PT = (XT ,YT , T ), which has the same kinematic equation as (2.1) with (VT , T ) as linear and angular velocities, respectively. No information on target motion is available. Obstacles can be of any concave or convex shapes and their position or geometrical distribution is unknown to the robot. We assume the following conditions are satised: - The robot moves in forward direction with constant linear velocity except in the vicinity of target - The robot is faster than target - The robot is equipped with a set of range sensors which provide range and angle to the enroute obstacles. The only available information from the target is the relative distance between the robot and target or LOS range. The objective is to design a collision-free guidance law,

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We wish to introduce a robot navigation law of the form: R (t) = F d() |t0 , d() |t0 . (3.6)

Of course, our navigation law (3.6) must satisfy the constraint: max R (t) max . (3.7) We will consider the case of a steady target: XT (t) XT 0 , YT (t) YT 0 .
Fig. 2. Reection cone of sensors

Denition 3.1: A navigation law of the form (3.6) is said to be encircling if it satises (3.7) and for any steady target location the robot (1) guided by this law after a certain nite time moves along a circle of the minimal turning radius (3.5) such that the steady target lies inside this circle. . We suppose that the following assumption holds: d(0) > 4Rmin . Let L be a given constant such that 0 < L < VR0 . We introduce the following navigation law: R (t) = max sgn(L + d(t)). where if > 0 1 sgn( ) := 0 if = 0 1 i f < 0. L R (0) = arccos VR . (3.11) (3.10) (3.9) (3.8)

IV. O BSTACLE AVOIDANCE S TRATEGY Navigation of a mobile robot towards a target in the presence of obstacles is more challenging and difcult. The robot has to operate in a real and unprepared environment without any priori information about the position of obstacles, their shapes, or their geometric distribution. We assume the robot is equipped with a set of range sensors, laser or sonar, situated equidistantly and counterclockwise on its perimeter. The sensors detect an obstacle in case it lies within maximum range of view and provide its range and angle to the robots moving direction. We will propose an algorithm to detour an enroute obstacle by maintaining a certain angle between the robots moving direction and a reference point on the obstacles surface. The idea of this obstacle avoidance strategy originates from biology where it was called negotiating obstacles with constant curvature (see e.g. [7]). An example of such a movement is a squirrel running around a tree or steering a vehicle around a bend in a road. A. Reection Cone of range sensors Reection cone is a cone generated by the reected signals from the obstacle. Reection cone provides information about the range and angle of each point on the surface of the obstacle which lies within the detectable area. It is assumed that each ray is reected back on its emission direction. The shaded part in Fig. 2 shows the reection cone of range sensors in confrontation with an obstacle where is the maximum cone width of the reection cone, which is xed and depends on the number of range sensors and their physical dispositions. Furthermore, 1 and 2 are the angles of the boundary rays of the cone, i.e. the rst and the last rays of reection cone, with the robots moving direction. B. Avoidance Command An obstacle avoidance strategy is proposed with reference to Fig. 3. In the proposed strategy, the velocity vector of the robot establishes a constant angle o , 0 < o < , termed 2 avoiding angle, outside the reection cone with one of the two boundary rays which is nearer to the moving direction of the mobile robot. In other words, at each time, the robot pick a reference point on the obstacle surface and tries to modify

We will need the following assumption:

(3.12)

The following theorem gives a mathematical analysis of the guidance law (3.10). Theorem 3.1: Let L be a given number. Suppose that assumptions (3.4), (3.9), (3.8) and (3.12) hold. Then, the guidance law (3.10) is encircling. The proof of this theorem will be given in the full version of this paper. Remark 3.1: It follows from the mathematical analysis of Theorem 3.1 that during the most important part of our robot trajectory with the navigation law (3.10) corresponding to the sliding mode with the surface d(t) = L, the angle R between the robot heading and the direction to target remains constant. That is why we call the navigation law presented in this paper Equiangular Navigation Guidance (ENG) Law. The geometry of motion with a constant angle between the heading and the direction to the steady target is described by the so-called equiangular spiral; (see e.g. [9]).

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Fig. 3.

Avoiding the obstacle while preserving a constant avoiding angle (a) (b)

its moving direction in order to establish a constant avoiding angle. In Fig. 3, since 2 is smaller than 1 , the instantaneous velocity vector of the robot is modied so that 2 (t) o as t , which would result in the robot preserving a constant distance from the obstacle. Considering = min(1 , 2 ), the commanded angular velocity of the robot in the proposed approach is dened as follows

(c) Fig. 4.

(d)

R = max sgn( )
where,

(4.13)

Different cases of encountering an obstacle TABLE I

sgn( )o + sgn( )o

If VR lies within the reection cone If VR lies outside the reection cone. (4.14)

IF

Fig. 4, shows four different cases under which the robot + encounters an obstacle. and denote the positive and negative angles, respectively. In Fig. 4(a), the velocity vector of the robot is inside the reection cone and = 2 . Applying the proposed approach, we have R = + o and the robot turns counterclockwise in order to enlarge the avoiding angle to o and bypass the obstacle from the left hand side in a shorter path. Similar arguments can be contrived for other cases in order to derive the related avoidance command. When 1 = 2 one direction is chosen by denition. If there is no reection cone or if the velocity vector lies outside the cone while making an avoiding angle bigger than o with the nearer boundary ray, ENG is sufcient to navigate the robot towards the target. Having applied the proposed approach, a safety distance d0 is preserved to obstacles which can be adjusted depend on the robots physical characteristics as a function of dmax and o . V. NAVIGATION A LGORITHM In this section we present an algorithm which mixes the guidance and avoidance commands in order to safely navigate the robot in an unknown environment. In the proposed algorithm, the robot has the ability to change the trajectory in realtime in order to detour an obstacle as soon as the obstacle appears on the way. The guidance algorithm is represented by pseudo code, shown in table (I). An explanation of the basic concept behind the proposed approach can be presented with reference to Fig. 5. Ignoring the presence of obstacle, in the nominal trajectory generated by ENG, trajectory (a), the robot travels through the obstacle while moving towards the stationary target along an equiangular spiral. Having

ELSE END

(There is a reection cone) = min(1 , 2 ) IF (VR is inside the cone) = sgn( )o ELSE IF < o = + sgn( )o ELSE = L + d END = L + d

THEN THEN THEN

R = max sgn( )

applied the proposed idea, considering an obstacle on the way, the robot moves along the trajectory (b) and approaches the target. Several intermediate points have been shown on the trajectory. As while as there is no reection cone, the robot moves along the same trajectory as trajectory (a). At point (2), the range sensors detect an enroute obstacle. The velocity vector is outside the reection cone, however since the avoiding angle is less than o , it turns clockwise in order to enlarge the avoiding angle and bypass the obstacle. Points 3, 4, and 5 show the robot detouring the obstacle with constant avoiding angle and safety distance. The velocity vector at point 6 is outside the cone and avoiding angle is larger than o , hence, the guidance algorithm switches to ENG and the robot approaches the target. VI. C OMPUTER S IMULATIONS In this section, we present computer simulation results for a robot moving in an unprepared environment. For simulation purposes and testing we used Matlab and Mobotsim 1.0 simulator, which is a 2D easy to use graphical mobile robot simulator [11]. Simulation parameters have been shown in Table II.

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Fig. 6. Robot navigation towards a target (a) without obstacle, (b) in the presence of obstacle

Fig. 5.

Illustration of guidance approach TABLE II

Parameter ts VR max Dp dmax

Value 0.1s 0.5 m/s 0.6 rad/s 0.1 0.5 m 1.5 m

Comments Sampling Intervals Robot linear velocity Maximum angular velocity Boundary layer thickness Robot platform diameter sensorss Maximum measurable range

(a) Fig. 7.

(b) Avoiding stationary obstacles

Remark 6.1: Although the proposed algorithm is also applicable for navigation towards a maneuvering target, in this paper we only consider the stationary target. Simulation results for the case of maneuvering targets will be in a forthcoming paper. The navigation algorithm is applied to various obstacle avoidance problems, and the results are shown. The only available information from the target is the LOS range, d. Ignoring the presence of obstacle, in the nominal trajectory generated by ENG with L = 0.4, shown in trajectory (a) on Fig. 6, the robot moves towards the target with constant linear velocity and a nearly constant approaching angle along a semi-equiangular spiral. The value of L is xed throughout the experiment. Trajectory (b) in Fig. 6 shows the robot encountering a geostationary obstacle while safely navigate towards the goal. Note that, changing the referenced avoiding angle o or the maximum radius of the cone dmax , the safety distance between the robot and the target will change. Robot trajectory in confrontation with more challenging environment is shown in Fig. 7 in which the robot encounters corner situations on the way towards the target. Applying the guidance strategy, the robot successfully bypasses the obstacles and approaches the target.

VII. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS To verify validity and study the performance of navigation approach in practice, various tests have been conducted on an ActivMedia Pioneer 3-DX robot. The robot is controlled using its onboard PC and is equipped with a Sick laser scanner, which gives the distance and angle to the obstacle if it is within the detectable area. To implement the guidance algorithm, we use C++ and Active Media Robotics Interface Application (ARIA), which is an Object Oriented C++ library for controlling ActivMedia mobile robots, [1]. Software development environment running in the Linux operating system. Remark 7.1: Since the experiments on estimation of LOSrange using the strength of the received signal is on progress, in order to get the distance between the robot and target at each time, we used the odometry information. In doing so, the initial position of the robot is considered as the origin of a global coordinate system and the target position is predened at (10m,0) for the outdoor experiment. Hence, knowing the robot position at each time, using odometry information, the relative distance between the robot and target can be easily calculated.

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(a)

(b)

(c)

(d) Fig. 8.

(e)

(f)

Approaching a steady target in the presence of obstacles in the second experiment

Throughout the experiments, we consider VR = 0.4 m/s, max = 0.7 rad/s, dmax = 1.5m, D p = 0.5m, L = 0.16. We consider an unprepared environment. In the experiment, the target is predened at (10m,0). In an obstacle-free environment the robot approaches the target along an equiangular spiral as shown in Fig. 6, trajectory (a). In order to show the performance of the proposed strategy in real environment, some obstructions have been added to the nominal trajectory of the robot towards the target. Six different snapshots of this experiment are shown in Fig. 8. The robot trajectory is depicted with dashed lines. The robot approaches the target while bypassing the obstacles with a predened safety distance, and eventually goes into a circular trajectory around the target. R EFERENCES
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