Mobile Robot Navigation in Dynamic Environments Taking into Account Obstacle Motion in Costmap Construction

Abstract

An autonomous mobile robot must be capable of navigating through its environment safely in a collision-free manner. This is particularly challenging in dynamic environments, where the robot may find obstacles in unexpected locations and need to replan its path in accordance with the motion of the obstacles. This paper presents a new approach to costmap based navigation with a focus on the dynamic behaviour of the obstacles. The approach predicts future collisions using position and velocity estimates of the robot and the surrounding dynamic obstacles. The cost assignment process takes into account the regions of expected collisions, the uncertainty in the motion estimate of the obstacles, and their motion directions. This ensures collision free paths which do not pass in front of the obstacles, and hence the robot behavior is socially more acceptable.