Path planning in mobile robots
US11768495B2 · kind B2 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Feb 27, 2019 |
| Grant date | Sep 26, 2023 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Feb 3, 2040 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG05D2101/20
- WIPO fieldControl
- WIPO sectorInstruments
Abstract
The invention provides a computer-implemented method of planning a path for a mobile robot such as an autonomous vehicle in the presence of K obstacles. The method uses, for each of the K obstacles, a shape Bk and a density function pk(x) representing the probabilistic position of the obstacle. The method repeats the following steps for at least two different paths A: —choosing a path A, where A is the swept area of the robot within a given time interval; and—calculating based on the density function of each obstacle and the swept path an upper bound on the total probability of at least one collision FD between the robot and the K obstacles. This allows a number of candidate paths to be ranked for safety. By precomputing factors of the computational steps over K obstacles, the computation per path is O(N), and not O(NK). A safety threshold can be used to filter out paths below that threshold. An operating path to control the robot can be selected from the remaining paths, optionally based on other factors such as comfort or efficiency.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.