Simplified Cooperative Collision Avoidance Method Considering the Desired Direction as the Operation Objective of Each Mobile Robot

In a previous study, the authors have proposed the Cooperative Collision Avoidance (CCA) method which enables mobile robots to cooperatively avoid collisions, by extending the concept of the Velocity Obstacle to multiple robot systems. The method introduced an evaluation function considering an operation objective so that each robot can choose the velocity which optimizes the function. As the evaluation function could be of an arbitrary type, this method is applicable to a wide variety of tasks. However, it complicates the optimization of the function especially in real-time. In addition, construction of the evaluation function requires an operation objective of the other robot which is very hard to obtain without communication. In this paper, the CCA method is improved considering such problems for implementation. To decrease computational costs, the previous method is simplified by introducing two essential assumptions. Then, by treating the desired direction of locomotion for each robot as the operation objective, an operation objective estimator which estimates the desired direction of the other robot is introduced. The only measurement required is the other robot's relative position, since the other information can be obtained through the estimation. Hence, communicational devices that are necessary for most other cooperative methods are not required. Moreover, mobile robots employing the method can avoid collisions with uncooperative robots or moving obstacles as well as with cooperative robots. Consequently, this improved method can be applied to general dynamic environments consisting of various mobile robots.