Vector field for curve tracking with obstacle avoidance
Arthur H. D. Nunes, Adriano M. C. Rezende, Gilmar P. Cruz, Gustavo Freitas, Vinícius Mariano Gonçalves, Luciano C. A. Pimenta
Abstract
In this work, we extend a recently proposed methodology to construct artificial vector fields for robot navigation in n-dimensional spaces to track and circulate time-varying curves. Now, we incorporate the ability to deviate from obstacles that might be static or dynamic by constructing a collision-free vector field. It can be considered a reactive approach in which the obstacles can be locally sensed and then circumnavigated at a fixed distance. The novel vector field that allows the circumnavigation of obstacles and the traversal of a target curve is built upon the consideration of the closest points on the obstacles, which can assume a generic shape, and the closest point on the curve. To validate our method, we present ROS-based computational simulations and real-world experiments with a wheeled robot and a UAV quadcopter.