Motion planning in dynamic environments using the velocity space

This paper addresses a method for robot motion planning in dynamic environments, avoiding the moving and static obstacles while the robot drives towards the goal. The method maps the dynamic environment into a velocity space, using the concept of estimated arriving time to compute the times to potential collision and potential escape. The problem of finding the best motion command is directly treated in the velocity space, providing the trajectory which satisfies an optimization criterium (typically the minimum time or the shortest path). In this work the method is applied to robots which are subject to both kinematic constraints (i.e. involving the configuration parameters of the robot and their derivatives), and dynamic constraints, (i.e. the constraints imposed by the dynamics of the robot and the limits of its actuators). Some experimental results are discussed.