Towards a real-time architecture for obstacle avoidance and path planning in mobile robots

The design and partial implementation of a real-time architecture for a mobile robot, aimed particularly towards a vehicle developed for factory automation, is described. The authors develop a layered design to equip the robot with a number of behavioral competences. They examine sensing and a potential field algorithm especially to achieve modification of behavior at a speed close to the robot´s operational speed. It is shown how the layered architecture interfaces to the original onboard architecture, which provided sophisticated localization but no ability to deal with environmental exceptions