ACO-Kinematic: a hybrid first off the starting block

Abstract

The use of robots in carrying out various tasks is popular in many industries. In order to carry out a task, a robot has to move from one location to another using shorter, safer and smoother route. For movement, a robot has to know its destination, its previous location, a plan on the path it should take, a method for moving to the new location and a good understanding of its environment. Ultimately, the movement of the robot depends on motion planning and control algorithm. This paper considers a novel solution to the robot navigation problem by proposing a new hybrid algorithm. The hybrid algorithm is designed by combining the ant colony optimization algorithm and kinematic equations of the robot. The planning phase in the algorithm will find a route to the next step which is collision free and the control phase will move the robot to this new step. Ant colony optimization is used to plan a step for a robot and kinematic equations to control and move the robot to a location. By planning and controlling different steps, the hybrid algorithm will enable a robot to reach its destination. The proposed algorithm will be applied to multiple point-mass robot navigation in a multiple obstacle and line segment cluttered environment. In this paper, we are considering a priori known environments with static obstacles. The proposed motion planning and control algorithm is applied to the tractor-trailer robotic system. The results show a collision and obstacle free navigation to the target. This paper also measures the performance of the proposed algorithm using path length and convergence time, comparing it to a classical motion planning and control algorithm, Lyapunov based control scheme (LbCS). The results show that the proposed algorithm performs significantly better than LbCS including the avoidance of local minima.