Reactive Collision Avoidance for Nonholonomic Vehicles in Dynamic Environments with Obstacles of Arbitrary Shape

Abstract

Over the recent years, there has been an increasing interest in autonomous systems. Consequently, the problem of avoiding static and dynamic obstacles without human interference has gained a lot of attention. Avoiding collision, even in completely static environments, is significantly more challenging when the vehicle is subject to nonholonomic constraints. This paper presents a reactive algorithm for collision avoidance of dynamic, arbitrarily shaped obstacles, which is suitable for unicycle-type, nonholonomic vehicles. Unlike most reactive methods, we consider the exact shape of the obstacle, which allows the vehicle to utilize any space that is not occupied by the obstacle. This is an advantage over circle and ellipse approximations, as they can lead to overly conservative maneuvers. We provide explicit conditions under which collision avoidance is mathematically proven and validate the analysis by numerical simulations.