Development and analysis of a novel obstacle avoidance strategy for a multi-robot system inspired by the Bug-1 algorithm

This paper addresses the development and implementation of an obstacle avoidance strategy for a multi-robot system operating in an unknown environment. This novel strategy is based on the conventional Bug-1 obstacle avoidance algorithm, which is a non-heuristic method for obstacle avoidance in an unknown environment. In the Bug-1 algorithm, a robot circumnavigates the obstacle to find the coordinates of the point, having minimum distance to the goal. In the case of the new strategy, two robots will circumnavigate the obstacle in such a manner that it will reduce both the total travel time and the distance traveled. Information acquired by the individual robots during the circumnavigation is shared across other robots to accomplish the obstacle avoidance efficiently. A theoretical analysis is carried out to show the improvement in travel time and energy expenditure of the robots in implementing the new strategy. Different test scenarios for comparing the performance of the obstacle avoidance strategies using simulations is also identified. The simulation studies using these scenarios suggest that the new algorithm is a better algorithm with respect to multi-robot obstacle avoidance. The experimental study conducted also shows that robots using this new algorithm have a better travel time and less energy expenditure than the conventional Bug-1 algorithm.