Path Planning based on Geographical Features Information that considers Moving Possibility of Outdoor Autonomous Mobile Robot

In this research, we propose a path-planning algorithm for an autonomous mobile robot using geographical information, under the condition that the robot moves in unknown environment. All image inputted by camera at every sampling time are analyzed and geographical elements are recognized, and the geographical information is embedded in environmental map. The geographical information was transformed into 1-dimensional evaluation value that expressed the difficulty of movement for the robot. The robot goes toward the goal searching for path that minimizes the evaluation value at every sampling time. Then, the path is updated by integrating the exploited information and the prediction on unexploited environment. We used a sensor fusion method for improving the mobile robot dead reckoning accuracy. The experiment results that confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm on the robot's reaching the goal successfully using geographical information are presented.