Motion planning for mobile robot with modified BIT* and MPC

Abstract

In this paper, a mobile robot motion planning method with modified BIT* (batch informed trees) and MPC (Model Predictive Control) is presented. The conventional BIT* was modified here by integrating a stretch method that improves the path points connections, to get a collision-free path more quickly. After getting a reference path, the MPC method is employed to determine the motion at each moment with a given objective function. In the objective function, a repulsive function based on the direction and distance of the obstacles is introduced to avoid the robot being too close to the obstacle, so the safety can be ensured. Simulation results show the good navigation performance of the whole framework in different scenarios.