Safe Navigation for Indoor Mobile Robots Part I: A Sensor-based Navigation Framework

In this paper we present the first part, part 1 of two, of a complete exploration and navigation methodology that enables a robot to safely navigate in an unknown environment. Reactive sensor-based navigation tasks and control laws are derived from the interaction between the robot and its workspace. The perception is performed by a two-dimensional laser range-finder mounted on the robot. Reactive navigation tasks are defined based on the task function framework in such a way that the robot can explore an unknown indoor environment without any reference trajectory computation. Obstacle avoidance is ensured as a straight property implicit to the definition of the navigation tasks. The stability and robustness of the derived control laws with respect to the model errors are analyzed. The experimental results validate the proposed methodology. KEY WORDS—reactive indoor navigation, mobile robot, sensor-based control, laser range data, Voronoï diagram, stability and robustness analysis