Guidance-Based On-Line Robot Motion Planning for the Interception of Mobile Targets in Dynamic Environments

This paper presents a novel method for the interception of moving targets in the presence of obstacles. The proposed method provides simultaneous positional interception and velocity matching of the target moving in a dynamic environment with static and/or mobile obstacles. An acceleration command for the autonomous robot (i.e., interceptor) is first obtained from a rendezvous-guidance technique that takes into account the kinematic and dynamic limitations of the interceptor, but not the motion of the obstacles. This command is subsequently augmented, though only when necessary, in order to avoid those obstacles that are about to interfere with the time-optimal motion of the interceptor. The augmenter acceleration command is obtained in our work through a modified cell-decomposition method. Extensive simulation and experimental results have clearly demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed interception method, tangibly better than other existing obstacle-avoidance methods.