The admissible gap (AG) method for reactive collision avoidance

Abstract

This paper presents a new concept, the Admissible Gap, for collision avoidance. An admissible gap AG is defined as the gap that a robot may safely pass through, while obeying the shape and motion constraints. By employing this concept, a new obstacle avoidance approach was developed, improving the navigation performance in unknown cluttered environments. Unlike most state-of-the-art methods, our approach explicitly considers the robot shape and kinematic constraints rather than adapting a method originally designed for a holonomic pointlike robot. Experimental results demonstrated the power of the proposed AG approach. Moreover, a comparison with state-of-the-art methods showed that the AG approach generates more efficient, safer, and smoother trajectories.