Trajectory time scaling of a mobile robot to avoid dynamic obstacles on the basis of the INLVO

To ensure the collision safety of mobile robots, the velocity of dynamic obstacles should be considered while planning the robot’s trajectory for high-speed navigation tasks. A planning scheme that computes the collision avoidance trajectory by assuming static obstacles may result in obstacle collisions owing to the relative velocities of dynamic obstacles. This article proposes a trajectory time-scaling scheme that considers the velocities of dynamic obstacles. The proposed inverse nonlinear velocity obstacle (INLVO) is used to compute the nonlinear velocity obstacle based on the known trajectory of the mobile robot. The INLVO can be used to obtain the boundary conditions required to avoid a dynamic obstacle. The simulation results showed that the proposed scheme can deal with typical collision states within a short period of time. The proposed scheme is advantageous because it can be applied to conventional trajectory planning schemes without high computational costs. In addition, the proposed scheme for avoiding dynamic obstacles can be used without an accurate prediction of the obstacle trajectories owing to the fast generation of the time-scaling trajectory.