Local obstacle avoidance control for multi-axle and multi-steering-mode wheeled robot based on window-zone division strategy

Due to the length of the body, multiple number of wheels and the complexity of controlling, it is difficult for a multi-axle wheeled robot to avoid obstacles autonomously in narrow space. To solve this problem, this article presents window-zone division and gap-seeking strategies for local obstacle avoidance of a multi-axle multi-steering-mode all-wheel-steering wheeled robot. Firstly, according to the influence degree of lidar points on the robot, combining with the human driving characteristics of avoiding obstacles, a window-zone division strategy is proposed. The lidar points are selected and divided according to the degree of emergency. By eliminating irrelevant points, the work of obstacle avoidance calculation is reduced. Thus, this increases the response speed of obstacle avoidance. Based on this, the robot uses a multi-steering-mode to avoid emergency obstacle. Secondly, the gap-seeking theory of normal obstacle avoidance is proposed. It can seek the passable gap among the surrounding lidar points according to the prediction of the robot's driving trajectory corresponding to different steering angles. Thirdly, the on-board control system and the upper computer program of the robot were designed. Thereafter a multi-steering-mode algorithm was designed based on the front and rear wheel steering angles and speed, as well as the travel trajectory forecast-drawing module. Finally, the proposed methods have been implemented on a five-axle all-wheel steering wheeled robot. Some obstacle avoidance experiments are carried out with S-shaped, Z-Shaped, U-Shaped, and Random obstacle distribution. The results show that the proposed strategy can finish all obstacle avoidance successfully.