Guidance Based Methods for Real-Time Navigation of Mobile Robots

Real-time motion-planning in autonomous vehicle navigation applications has typically referred to the on-line trajectory-planning problem to reach a designated location in minimal time. In this context, past research achievements have been subjected to three main limitations: (i) only the problem of interception (position matching) has been considered, whereas the problem of rendezvous (velocity matching) has not been rigorously investigated; (ii) obstacles have been commonly treated as moving with constant velocity as opposed to being highly maneuverable and following a priori unknown trajectories; and, (iii) mostly, structured indoor terrains have been considered. This book addresses the above drawbacks by proposing the use of guidance-based methods that can be used by an autonomous vehicle to accurately and safely maneuver in the presence of dynamic obstacles on realistic terrains. The objective is time-optimal rendezvous with static or dynamic targets. The proposed methods minimizes rendezvous time and energy consumption, by directly considering the dynamics of the obstacles and the target, while accurately determining a feasible way to travel through an uneven terrain.