Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

SAGETRACK

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
The International Journal of Robotics Research
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Multimedia
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Pereira, G. A. S.
Right arrow Articles by Campos, M. F. M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Robot Navigation in Multi-terrain Outdoor Environments

Guilherme A. S. Pereira

Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil, gpereira{at}ufmg.br

Luciano C. A. Pimenta

Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil

Alexandre R. Fonseca

Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil

Leonardo de Q. Corrêa

Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil

Renato C. Mesquita

Departamento de Engenharia Elétrica, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil

Luiz Chaimowicz

Departamento de Ciência da Computação, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil

Daniel S. C. de Almeida

Departamento de Ciência da Computação, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil

Mario F. M. Campos

Departamento de Ciência da Computação, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG 31270-010, Brazil

This paper presents a methodology for motion planning in outdoor environments that takes into account specific characteristics of the terrain. Instead of decomposing the robot configuration space into "free" and "occupied", we consider the existence of several regions with different navigation costs. In this paper, costs are determined experimentally by navigating the robot through the regions and measuring the influence of the terrain on its motion. We measure the robot's vertical acceleration, which reflects the terrain roughness. The paper presents a hybrid (discrete—continuous) approach to guide and control the robot. After decomposing the map into triangular cells, a path planning algorithm is used to determine a discrete sequence of cells that minimizes the navigation cost. Robot control is accomplished by a fully continuous vector field that drives the robot through the sequence of triangular cells. This vector field allows smooth robot trajectories from any position inside the sequence to the goal, even for a small number of large cells. Moreover, the vector field is terrain dependent in the sense it changes the robot velocity according to the characteristics of the terrain. Experimental results with a differential driven, all-terrain mobile robot illustrate the proposed approach.

Key Words: robot motion planning • field robotics • continuous vector fields

The International Journal of Robotics Research, Vol. 28, No. 6, 685-700 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0278364908097578
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?