Algorithm for Threat Area Avoidance in Military Unmanned Ground Vehicles

Abstract

In addition to the conventional obstacle avoidance capabilities, the Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) used in military environments should be capable of avoiding certain areas which could inflict damage to the UGVs or result in the failure of the mission. The threat area could be minefields or an area vulnerable to enemy fire or detection. In this paper we have proposed and implemented an algorithm for ‘Threat Area Avoidance (TAA)’. Our algorithm was incorporated in two of the obstacle avoidance methods, Vector Polar Histogram (VPH) and the Enhanced VPH. The performance of our algorithm was evaluated in terms of distance overhead, navigation time, computational time and UGV Orientation Angle Variation Index. Through simulations, we observed that the proposed algorithm avoids a potential threat area (even though it is free of any obstacles) and takes a safe path while navigating between the start and goal points, with minimum overhead in computation.