Smooth path planning for a home service robot using η3-splines

This paper presents a smooth path planning algorithm for a home service robot in presence of a known map and static obstacles. The algorithm proceeds in two steps. Firstly, the MAKLINK Graph based global path planner generates the shortest linear path which consists of several line segments. By introducing the 2D code landmarks into the global path planner, the path passes the landmarks as many as possible to reduce the motor encoder error. In the second step, the waypoints of the linear path are smoothly connected using the η³-splines. Considering the obstacle-avoiding issue, the feasible area is proposed in this paper to generate the path in a collision-free region. At last, the simulation and experiment results validate the feasibility of the smooth path planning algorithm.