Navigation Architecture for Mobile Robots with Temporal Stabilization of Movements

Path modulation and generation are classical issues in navigation architectures for autonomous mobile robots. However, a relevant issue arises in the path planning problem if temporal stabilization of the robot's movement is considered, i.e., all movements of the robot should be compensated when disturbances accelerate or decelerate the robot so that the total mission time reaches a target value. This work extends previous work by the authors on navigation architectures by including a global path planning level into the architecture. Simulations using the Webots software demonstrate the ability of the architecture to generate paths with temporal stabilization while avoiding obstacles detected in the environment. The experiments suggest that this extension preserves good formal properties such as stability which can be identified with the ability of the control architecture to drive the robot successfully to the goal.