Optimal Path Planning for Service Robot in Indoor Environment

An environment model called danger degree map is built in order to provide abundant environment information for service robot. As the indoor environment is partly unknown, we use layered path planning methods in the paper. A modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) is introduced to get an initial static optimized path. Dynamic layer can get multi-pattern information of dynamic obstacles, and create dynamic danger degree map of the environment. Then a modified A* algorithm is used to avoid dynamic obstacles based on dynamic danger degree map. Finally, the head-for-goal strategy is designed in order to help the service robot arrive at the destination with lowest cost. The method proposed in the paper is simple and can meet the real-time requirement of robot navigation. The dynamic path is not only safe enough but also short comparatively. Experiments demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method.