Mobile Robot Path Planning in Dynamic Environment Using Voronoi Diagram and Computation Geometry Technique

Abstract

This paper presents a novel path planning method for mobile robots in complex and dynamic environments using Voronoi diagram (VD) and computation geometry technique (CGT) termed, VD-CGT. An algorithm to categorize moving obstacles based on their positions, velocities, distances, and directions to ascertain their collision threat level and possible replanning decision is introduced. The initial path computation is done using morphological dilation, VD, A-star, and cubic spline algorithms. Instead of considering the entire map of the environment, CGT is used to compute a small rectangular region estimated to enclose a detected collision-threat obstacle and the current position of the robot. The roadmap is computed in the geometrical shape using VD and nodes are added to the initial roadmap nodes to compute a new path for replanning. To avoid increasing time and space requirements, these nodes are discarded before subsequent replanning is done. The results indicate better path replanning performance in complex and dynamic environments in terms of success path computation rate, path cost, time, and the number of replanning computations compared with other five popular related path planning approaches. The proposed method is efficient, and it computes safe and shortest replan path to goal with low computation time requirement. Unnecessary replanning computations are avoided which aid in reducing time and distance to get to the goal. With the performance results, the proposed method is a promising method for achieving safe, less path cost, and time in path replanning computations in complex and dynamic environments.