Motion Planning for Mobile Robots Using a Spline Surface

The artificial potential method uses a potential field to guide a robot from a start to a goal configuration respectively. The potential field consists of attractive potential used to pull a robot toward a goal and repulsive potential to keep it away from obstacles. However, there are two problems concerning local minimum and computational cost to be resolved in conventional artificial potential methods. This study proposes a method utilizing a spline surface that interpolates arbitrary boundaries and a domain reduction method that reduces the unnecessary area. The proposed spline surface interpolates arbitrary shaped boundaries and is used as an artificial potential to guide a robot for global motion planning of a mobile robot. A reduced domain process reduces the unnecessary domain. We apply a distance-weighted function as such a function, which blends distances from each boundary with a reduction in computational time compared with other analytical methods. As a result, this paper shows that an arbitrary boundary spline surface provides global planning and a domain reduction method reduces local minimum with quick operation.