Static Obstacles Avoidance of Autonomous Mobile Robots Based on Limit Cycle Approach

Abstract

Autonomous robot navigation is the subject of research in many disciplines. In this paper, we discuss the path planning method for obstacle avoidance based on the limit cycle, which has been shown to be effective in both static and dynamic environments. We focus the control architecture known as Limit Cycle, which generates robot trajectories defined by differential equations with proven stability through a Lyapunov function. This approach uses cylindrical bounding boxes around objects in the environment and implements reactive rules to avoid obstacles while respecting safety distances and avoiding deadlocks, local minima, and oscillations. An extension of this method, Parallel Elliptic Limit-Cycle, is also implemented, which is characterized by elliptic bounding boxes rather than cylindrical ones. Finally, results are provided to illustrate the effectiveness and merits of the proposed method for autonomous path planning.