Trajectory Planning of Mobile Robot for Obstacle Avoidance Considering Time and Path Length

For a mobile robot trajectory planning, the arrival time and the path length to the goal are two important cost factors when there is no conflict among moving obstacles. This study presents an obstacle avoidance trajectory planning method that considers the importance of arrival time and path length to a goal point in 3D X-Y-T configuration space. The trajectory cost function consisting of arrival time and the path length to the goal point is introduced. By expressing the cost function in terms of the time at which the robot avoids moving obstacles, the trajectory planning is formulated as an optimization problem. To verify the effectiveness of considering both time and path length, several simulations and experiments are carried out.