A new approach to avoid obstacles in mobile robot navigation: tangential escape

This paper proposes a new strategy for obstacle deviation when a mobile robot is navigating in a semistructured environment. The proposed control architecture is based on a reactive approach, thus demanding low computational effort. It allows the robot to navigate from a starting point to a destination point without colliding to any obstacle in its path. The deviation from an obstacle is performed according to an escape angle calculated so that the new robot orientation is tangent to the obstacle. It is shown that such strategy generates more efficient trajectories, in the sense that the destination point is reached in less time while saving energy and reducing the demand on the robot motors. Another meaningful feature of the proposed strategy is that it also allows to implement the behaviors Wall Following and Corridor Following with no additional computation.