Research On Path Planning For Mobile Robots

Path-planning for mobile robots is one of the most critical technologies among all of the robotics researches. The chief task of the path-planning is: when the mobile robot is running under the environmental space, it is usually asked to seek one of optimal path which would link between the known start point and the known end point. That is to say that we at least could find the avoid-colliding path which should be shortest or lowest cost.Firstly, the thesis makes a summarize on different research aspects of mobile robot and compares the different development level of foreign and domestic and sums up the basic problem of the path-planning for the mobile robot.The robot's orientation is the first problem we should solve. The veracious orientation is the precondition of the robot to finish the task. Several commonly used methods of orientation are introduced in the thesis and the method of error revise for track orientation based on vision of computer is emphasized because the mobile robot that we designed has the visual system with CCD camera.Path-planning for mobile robot is composed of two main parts: the whole path-planning and the local path-planning. Several commonly used methods for the two parts are introduced and the advantages and disadvantages for each method are analyzed in this thesis. The strategy of path-finding based on A* algorithm for whole path-planning is used in the thesis. The main research of the thesis is how to use eighteen ultrasonic sensors to realize the obstacle avoidance. The strategy of path-finding based on grid algorithm for local path-planning is used.The control software for path planning based on VC++ is designed and is used to verify the correctness and validity of the algorithm.