A harmonic potential field approach for joint planning and control of a rigid, separable nonholonomic, mobile robot

• An efficient method is suggested for joint planning and control of dynamical mobile robots.
• The Guidance component of the controller is based on the Harmonic Potential Field approach for motion planning.
• A synchronizing controller is used to make the robot mimic the solution lines from the HPF planner.
• The approach demonstrated remarkable robustness in the presence of noise and actuator saturation.

The main objective of this paper is to provide a tool for performing path planning at the servo-level of a mobile robot. The ability to perform, in a provably-correct manner, such a complex task at the servo-level can lead to a large increase in the speed of operation, low energy consumption and high quality of response. Planning has been traditionally limited to the high level controller of a robot. The guidance velocity signal from this stage is usually converted to a control signal using what is known as an electronic speed controller (ESC). This paper demonstrates the ability of the harmonic potential field (HPF) approach to generate a provably-correct, constrained, well-behaved trajectory and control signal for a rigid, nonholonomic robot in a stationary, cluttered environment. It is shown that the HPF-based, servo-level planner can address a large number of challenges facing planning in a realistic situation. The suggested approach migrates the rich and provably-correct properties of the solution trajectories from an HPF planner to those of the robot. This is achieved using a synchronizing control signal whose aim is to align the velocity of the robot in its local coordinates, with that of the gradient of the HPF. The link between the two is made possible by representing the robot using what the paper terms “separable form”. The context-sensitive and goal-oriented control signal used to steer the robot is demonstrated to be well-behaved and robust in the presence of actuator noise, saturation and uncertainty in the parameters. The approach is developed, proofs of correctness are provided and the capabilities of the scheme are demonstrated using simulation results.