Obstacle avoidance control for a human-operated mobile robot

• Published in: 2008 10th IEEE International Workshop on Advanced Motion Control pp. 468 - 473
• Main Authors: Naoki Uchiyama, Tatsuhiro Hashimoto, Shigenori Sano, Shoji Takagi
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.03.2008
• Subjects: Mechatronics; Mobile robot obstacle avoidance; Mobile robots; Motion control
• ISBN: 1424417023; 9781424417025
• ISSN: 1943-6572; 1943-6580
• DOI: 10.1109/AMC.2008.4516112

Obstacle avoidance is an indispensable function in human-operated mobile robots for providing safe and easy operations. This paper presents a new approach to obstacle avoidance for a human-operated mobile robot in unknown environments. A general type of nonholonomic two-wheeled mobile robot with several distance sensors to detect obstacles is considered. Because the robot cannot move in arbitrary directions due to a nonholonomic constraint, we propose a model reference control approach in which the robot follows a desired trajectory generated by a reference model. The reference model has steering and brake-like functions that are adjusted according to distance sensor information. The stability of the proposed control system is analyzed with a linear model. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed by experiments in which several unskilled operators handle the robot in a corridor-like space.