Collision Probability based Safe Path Planning for Mobile Robots in Changing Environments

Automatic path planning has many applications in robotics, computer-aided design(CAD) and industrial manipulation. The property of safety is vital but seldom taken into consideraion by typical path planning. In this paper, collision probability is introduced as an evaluation of crowd degree of environments to get a safer path. The smaller collision probability a node has, the more possibly the node can be extended. Meanwhile, the in/out degree of a node is limited to prevent some nodes to be extended excessively. Through evaluating collision probability on-line, a safe path planning based on DRRTs, called Safe-DRRT, is proposed to provide a path not only feasible but also safe. Finally, a path planner is implemented with Safe-DRRT as a guidance and a local planner. In plentifully crowded experiments with moving obstacles, the proposed method has demonstrated to be competent compared to the state of the art.