A circular arc path algorithm for mobile robot path planning

Aiming at the inherent limitation of the artificial potential field (APF) algorithm for mobile robot path planning that a path can not be detected among neighbouring obstacles, the paper presents a circular arc path algorithm to modify the APF algorithm. Based on the locus equation, this modified algorithm plans the path of a mobile robot in the form of regular curve, and then figures out the path equation denoted by the equation of a circle to simplify the calculation. In addition, both the real-time feature of path planning and the shortest path are considered to get the optimal path. A 3D laser scanning system was constructed as the experimental platform for the algorithm, and the navigation information of the algorithm obtained from 3D depth-of-field information was applied to the experiment to verify the performance of the path planning method proposed in the paper. The results indicate that the circular arc path algorithm can resolve the problem of the APF algorithm that a path can not be detected between densely spaced obstacles efficiently.