Flexible Path Planning for Nonholonomic Mobile Robots

This work presents a flexible path planning method for nonholonomic mobile robots. An intelligent planner based on a static map of the robot's environment has been developed. It comprises the possibility to set current robot properties on the fly and can therefore be used for many different mobile robots. The generated path is smoothened and eventually modified in reaction to dynamic obstacles or other external forces, using the method of elastic bands. This common algorithm has been extended for robots meeting the restrictions of a Dubin's car (nonholonomic robot that can only move forward).