Real-Time Dynamic Path Planning of Mobile Robots: A Novel Hybrid Heuristic Optimization Algorithm

Sensors (Basel). 2019 Dec 28;20(1):188. doi: 10.3390/s20010188.

Abstract

Mobile robots are becoming more and more widely used in industry and life, so the navigation of robots in dynamic environments has become an urgent problem to be solved. Dynamic path planning has, therefore, received more attention. This paper proposes a real-time dynamic path planning method for mobile robots that can avoid both static and dynamic obstacles. The proposed intelligent optimization method can not only get a better path but also has outstanding advantages in planning time. The algorithm used in the proposed method is a hybrid algorithm based on the beetle antennae search (BAS) algorithm and the artificial potential field (APF) algorithm, termed the BAS-APF method. By establishing a potential field, the convergence speed is accelerated, and the defect that the APF is easily trapped in the local minimum value is also avoided. At the same time, by setting a security scope to make the path closer to the available path in the real environment, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method are verified through simulative results.

Keywords: beetle antennae search algorithm (BAS); dynamic obstacle avoidance; hybrid optimization algorithm; mobile robot; real-time path planning.