A Path Planning Technique For Autonomous Mobile Robot Using Free-Configuration Eigenspaces

This paper presents the implementation of a novel technique for sensor based path planning of autonomous mobile robots. The proposed method is based on finding free-configuration eigen spaces (FCE) in the robot actuation area. Using the FCE technique to find optimal paths for autonomous mobile robots, the underlying hypothesis is that in the low-dimensional manifolds of laser scanning data, there lies an eigenvector which corresponds to the free-configuration space of the higher order geometric representation of the environment. The vectorial combination of all these eigenvectors at discrete time scan frames manifests a trajectory, whose sum can be treated as a robot path or trajectory. The proposed algorithm was tested on two different test bed data, real data obtained from Navlab SLAMMOT and data obtained from the real-time robotics simulation program Player/Stage. Performance analysis of FCE technique was done with existing four path planning algorithms under certain working parameters, namely computation time needed to find a solution, the distance travelled and the amount of turning required by the autonomous mobile robot. This study will enable readers to identify the suitability of path planning algorithm under the working parameters, which needed to be optimized. All the techniques were tested in the real-time robotic software Player/Stage. Further analysis was done using MATLAB mathematical computation software.