Bubble potential field for mobile robots local avoidance

Local obstacle avoidance is one of the key technologies to ensure safe and reliable navigation for mobile robots in the dynamic unknown environment. Distance and direction are two important evaluations for robot to judge the risk of obstacles. A 2D bubble potential field with low computation was designed and realized. Thus, by using this field, the equilibrium problem between distance and direction was described in the numerical way and a unified risk value of obstacles was produced. Robot uses the values for rapid assessment of the risk of obstacles, and then optimizes the avoidance behavior. This method has strong ability to accommodate environment and has characteristics of low computation complexity, excellent real-time ability. Simulation results show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method.