(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-05)
Ok, Kyel; Ansari, Sameer; Gallagher, Billy; Sica, William; Dellaert, Frank; Stilman, Mike
In this paper, a two-level path planning algorithm
that deals with map uncertainty is proposed. The higher
level planner uses modified generalized Voronoi diagrams to
guarantee finding a connected path from the start to the goal
if a collision-free path exists. The lower level planner considers
uncertainty of the observed obstacles in the environment and
assigns repulsive forces based on their distance to the robot
and their positional uncertainty. The attractive forces from the
Voronoi nodes and the repulsive forces from the uncertainty-
biased potential fields form a hybrid planner we call Voronoi
Uncertainty Fields (VUF). The proposed planner has two
strong properties: (1) bias against uncertain obstacles, and (2)
completeness. We analytically prove the properties and run
simulations to validate our method in a forest-like environment.