Obstacle avoidance approaches of autonomous mobile robots in harsh environment

Abstract

Obstacle avoidance has been a hotspot in the field of robotics. Good performance of obstacle avoidance is key to the success of robots, especially in harsh environment where the external environmental factors pose challenges to the robots. Currently, numerous obstacle avoidance methods are being developed in an attempt to optimize the decision of the autonomous mobile robots in harsh environment. To enhance the reliability of obstacle avoidance methods, it is essential to have a clear picture of the advances and breakthroughs in this field and see which research area needs to be improved. This paper focuses on the current obstacle avoidance methods or path-planning algorithms in the underwater environment and the space environment, with description of their works and discussion of their advantages and weakness. Current problems of these methods include lack of reliable field tests, inadequate assumption of obstacles when designing the algorithm and limited capability in handling special cases that no possible path is feasible. This paper intends to provide researchers with a generalized review of obstacle avoidance methods in harsh environment and a proposal of the potential research directions in this field in the future. It is recommended that researchers to design more complex scenarios, improve the performance of robots to avoid being trapped in special situations, and consider the adaptability of robots in different environment.