Constraints of Potential Field for Obstacle Avoidance on Car-like Mobile Robots

The well-known potential field method for obstacle avoidance in the scope of mobile robots is discussed in this paper. Particular attention is on the car-like mobile robots, which impose practical limitations on the application of potential field method due to its limited speed and curvature in motion. Along with the review of some recent studies on this topic, we point out the necessity of implementing a nonholonomic motion planner and propose some extensions to other potential-field-related methods to deal with the constraints of car-like robots. Two exemplary scenarios based on our extensions are simuated to prove their feasibility in application.