Managing the Dynamics of a Harmonic Potential Field-Guided Robot in a Cluttered Environment

This paper demonstrates the ability of the harmonic potential field (HPF) planning method to generate a well-behaved constrained path for a robot with second order dynamics in a cluttered environment. It is shown that HPF-based controllers may be developed for holonomic, as well as nonholonomic, robots to effectively suppress the effect of inertial forces on the robot´s trajectory while maintaining all the attractive features of a purely kinematic HPF planner. The capabilities of the suggested navigation controller are demonstrated using simulation results for the holonomic and nonholonomic cases.