Robot pathfinding with obstacle avoidance capabilities in a static indoor environment via TOR iterative method using harmonic potentials

¹ Centre for Defence Foundation Studies, National Defence University of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
² Faculty of Computing & Informatics, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia
³ Faculty of Science & Natural Resources, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia

^* Corresponding author: a.qilah@upnm.edu.my

Abstract

Mobile robots are always in a state where they have to find a collision-free path in their environment from start to the target point. This study tries to solve the problem of mobile robot iteratively by using a numerical technique. It is based on potential field technique that was modelled using the Laplace’s equation to restrain the creation of a potential functions across regions in the mobile robot’s configuration space. The gradient formed by the potential field is then used to generate a path for the robot to advance through. The present paper proposes a Two-Parameter Over-Relaxation (TOR) iterative method that is used to solve Laplace’s equation for obtaining the potential field that is then utilized for finding path of the robot, thus solving the robot pathfinding problem. The experiment indicates that it is capable of producing a smooth path between the starting and target points through the use of a finite-difference technique. Furthermore, the simulation results show that this numerical approach executes quicker and provides a smoother trail than to the previous works, that includes Successive Over-Relaxation (SOR) and Accelerated Over-Relaxation (AOR) methods.