Mobile robot navigation using potential functions

A method is presented in order to construct a smooth obstacle-free path amidst a finite number of disjoint disk-shaped obstacles for mobile robot navigation. The first step is to assign artificial potential functions to each obstacle and the goal. Then, the gradient flow associated with the weighted sum of the above functions generates the desired path. The procedure does not require complete prior knowledge of the positions of the obstacles, as long as they can be detected and approximated by disjoint disks. The algorithm presented represents a computationally simple way to construct paths and a systematic method of encoding the geometric data about the environment into a smooth vector field, which is used for mobile robot navigation