Exploiting Critical Points to Reduce Positioning Error for Sensor-Based Navigation

This paper presents a planner that determines a path such that the robot does not have to heavily rely on odometry to reach its goal. The planner determines a sequence of obstacle boundaries that the robot must follow to reach the goal. Since this planner is used in the context of a coverage algorithm already presented by the authors, we assume that the free space is already, completely or partially, represented by a cellular decomposition whose cell boundaries are defined by critical points of Morse functions (isolated points at obstacle boundaries). The topological relationship among the cells is represented by a graph where nodes are the critical points and edges connect the nodes that define a common cell (i. e. , the edges correspond to the cells themselves). A search of this graph yields a sequence of cells that directs the robot from a start to a goal. Once a sequence of cells and critical points are determined, a robot traverses each cell by mainly following the boundary of the cell along the obstacle boundaries and minimizes the accumulated dead-reckoning error at the intermediate critical points. This allows the robot to reach the goal robustly even in the presence of dead-reckoning error.

Authors

• Ercan U. Acar
• Howie Choset

Keywords

• Navigation
• Orbital robotics
• Robustness
• Robotics and automation
• Path planning
• Robot sensing systems
• Motion planning
• Servomechanisms
• Resonance
• Sea measurements
• Critical Point
• Position Error
• Free Space
• Cell Binding
• Cell Sequencing
• Discrete Set
• Odometry
• Reverse Phase
• Ceiling
• Entire Space
• Configuration Space
• Mobile Robot
• Disc Diameter
• Order Phase
• Range Of Sensors
• Outside Of The Cell
• Robot Navigation
• Side Boundaries
• Total Path Length
• Surface Normals
• Navigation Algorithm