A WIP Vehicle Control Method Based on Improved Artificial Potential Field Subject to Multi-Obstacle Environment

Abstract

This paper presents a control method for a WIP vehicle in multi-obstacle environment based on improved artificial potential field. Firstly, an improved artificial potential field (IAPF) is developed, where a safe distance is introduced to the existing repulsive potential field to solve the security issue, while the local minima can also be eliminated in the meantime. Next, an obstacle avoidance controller is designed based on the IAPF, where the nonholonomic constraint and underactuated characteristic of the WIP vehicle are fully considered, and the stability condition of the system is analyzed by means of the related control theory. Moreover, to further improve the control performance, a key parameter that play an important role in the controller is adjusted by taking advantage of fuzzy logic, and detailed analyses are given to demonstrate its necessity and effectiveness. Finally, considering a motion environment that contains dense obstacles, narrow corridor and an obstacle near the target, numerical simulations are conducted to validate the proposed method, whose results indicate that the method has a good performance to control the WIP vehicle in multi-obstacle environment.