Velocity Obstacle Approaches for Multi-Agent Collision Avoidance

This paper presents a critical analysis of some of the most promising approaches to geometric collision avoidance in multi-agent systems, namely, the velocity obstacle (VO), reciprocal velocity obstacle (RVO), hybrid-reciprocal velocity obstacle (HRVO) and optimal reciprocal collision avoidance (ORCA) approaches. Each approach is evaluated with respect to increasing agent populations and variable sensing assumptions. In implementing the localized avoidance problem, the author notes a problem of symmetry not considered in the literature. An intensive 1000-cycle Monte Carlo analysis is used to assess the performance of the selected algorithms in the presented conditions. The ORCA method is shown to yield the most scalable computation times and collision likelihood in the presented cases. The HRVO method is shown to be superior than the other methods in dealing with obstacle trajectory uncertainty for the purposes of collision avoidance. The respective features and limitations of each algorithm are discussed and presented through examples.