Abstract— In this paper, we deal with the real-time navigation problem of a differential drive robot in dynamic environments. As a rule, the robot is controlled by wheel velocity commands at sampling intervals and moves along a straight line or a circular arc in accordance with those commands. Thus, we define the wheel velocity obstacle, which is a set of all the left and right wheel velocity pairs that induce collisions with obstacles within a given time horizon. Also, a navigation strategy is suggested that will allow the robot to reach its destination without colliding with obstacles. Our algorithm was found to outperform previously released collision avoidance algorithms in terms of safety through Monte Carlo simulations.

Index Terms— collision avoidance, motion planning, velocity obstacles, differential drive robot

Cite: Jae D. Jeon and Beom H. Lee, "Wheel Velocity Obstacles for Differential Drive Robot Navigation," Jounal of Automation and Control Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 5, pp. 347-353, October, 2015. doi: 10.12720/joace.3.5.347-353