A new mobile robot navigation using a turning point searching algorithm with the consideration of obstacle avoidance

When a robot goes from the initial position to the goal position in an unknown environment, we need the autonomous navigation for avoiding the obstacles and moving toward the goal position simultaneously. Among the various methods, we focus on the navigation method by using the geometric analysis with a laser scanner having the high resolution. When the robot turns around the obstacle, our proposed navigation method supplies the robot with the turning point for avoiding the obstacle and moving on the shortest path. At the same time, the next heading velocity is generated for the robot to have the maximum velocity by using the distance between the current position of the robot and the turning point. The robot executes the navigation in the unknown workspace which the various obstacles are randomly located. As the experimental results, we obtain the shortest path of the robot regardless of the obstacle's shape in the unknown environment.