Virtual Obstacles for Safe Mobile Robot Navigation

Safe mobile robot navigation is important in both indoor and outdoor environments. In static environments, path planning of mobile robots is mainly governed by factors like shortest paths selection. However, in dynamic scenarios, some paths may be blocked temporarily (for ex. for cleaning) while others may not suitable for robot navigation due to high traffic. In such scenarios, robots must avoid using such paths. This paper proposes a method to actively block such paths by using virtual obstacles. The virtual obstacles can be placed or removed by a user anywhere on the map permanently or for specific intervals. The robot's global path is planned by considering the influence of virtual obstacles. Experiments in real scenarios shows that the proposed method is able to alter the global paths of the robots for safe navigation.