Motion planning in the presence of directional and regional avoidance constraints using nonlinear, anisotropic, harmonic potential fields: a physical metaphor

摘要

Motion planning, or goal-oriented, context-sensitive, intelligent control is essential if an agent is to act in a useful manner. This paper suggests a new class of motion planners that can mark a constrained trajectory to a target zone in an environment that need not necessarily be a priori known. The novelty of the suggested planner lies in its ability to enforce region avoidance and direction satisfaction constraints jointly. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time that directional constraints have been addressed in the motion planning literature. To build such a planner, the potential field approach is used for inducing the control action. In addition, to cope with the presence of the above constraints (in particular, the directional constraints), a new type of potential field, called the nonlinear anisotropic harmonic potential field, is suggested. The planner has applications in traffic management and operations research among others. Development of the approach, proofs of correctness, and simulation results are supplied.