Iterative Active-Inactive Obstacle Classification for Time-Optimal Collision Avoidance

Abstract

Time-optimal obstacle avoidance is a prevalent problem encountered in various fields, including robotics and autonomous vehicles, where the task involves determining a path for a moving vehicle to reach its goal while navigating around obstacles within its environment. This problem becomes increasingly challenging as the number of obstacles in the environment rises. We propose an iterative active-inactive obstacle approach, which involves identifying a subset of the obstacles as "active", that considers solely the effect of the "active" obstacles on the path of the moving vehicle. The remaining obstacles are considered "inactive" and are not considered in the path planning process. The obstacles are classified as 'active' on the basis of previous findings derived from prior iterations. This approach allows for a more efficient calculation of the optimal path by reducing the number of obstacles that need to be considered. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated with two different dynamic models using the various number of obstacles. The results show that the proposed method is able to find the optimal path in a timely manner, while also being able to handle a large number of obstacles in the environment and the constraints on the motion of the object.This paper is under review in IROS24