Obstacle avoidance of non-holonomic unicycle robots based on fluid mechanical modeling

Abstract

This paper is concerned with obstacle avoidance of robots moving on a plane, based on a fluid mechanical principle known as the Circle Theorem. Considering the motion region as a fictitious fluid environment surrounding the obstacles, fluid streamlines are calculated which correspond to unique smooth paths that a mobile robot can follow without colliding with the obstacles. The design and analysis are initially performed assuming simple integrator dynamics for the agent, and later extended for more realistic non-holonomic unicycle dynamic agent models, with the help of proportional integral (PI) control and backstepping principles. Both point and non-point (ellipse) geometric models are cons..