Kinodynamic Robot Motion Planning Based on the Generalised Voronoi Diagram

Kinodynamic motion planning of an autonomous robot in an unknown or partially known indoor or outdoor environment is a challenging task, especially when the generated path must maintain the largest distance from surrounding obstacles and the robot’s kinodynamic properties, its localisation, and uncertainty of the environment are also considered. A new motion planning technique, which is built on the generalised Voronoi diagram, for a robot with kinematic or dynamic constraints is proposed. The generalised Voronoi diagram serves this task effectively as it maintains the largest (the safest) possible distance from surrounding obstacles. Moreover, a novel approximation geometric algorithm, which embodies a trade-off between the efficiency of computation, implementation difficulty, and robustness, for computing this diagram is presented.