Real time obstacle motion prediction using neural network based extended Kalman filter for robot path planning

Navigation in dynamic environments for mobile robots is a difficult problem as it involves estimating the path of moving obstacles. The measured data usually contains a bias and noise in addition to its true value. Based on a stacked denoising autoencoder (SDAE), the enhanced Kalman filter developed in this paper can estimate the obstacle position from any type of noisy input. The extended Kalman filter's ability to predict an error-free path is impacted by the measurement noise covariance matrix employed. The SDAE is a neural network topology based on deep learning that can be used to determine the optimum covariance matrix. Both Adam and stochastic gradient learning algorithms are used to train the neural network. The robot's path is re-planned based on the predicted obstacle path to ensure safe navigation. MATLAB-based numerical simulations are used to demonstrate the utility and superiority of the proposed method over the traditional Kalman filter and Particle filter methodologies. The simulation results show that in the presence of any sort of noise, the proposed technique is exceptionally durable and reliable. The simulation findings also reveal that when it comes to denoising the measured data, the stacked denoising autoencoder with Adam optimizer is more efficient than the stochastic approach. The performance of the developed algorithm is validated in MATLAB simulated environments, and it can be extended for navigation tasks. In terms of computation time and robustness in closely spaced obstacles, simulation experiments demonstrated that the path planning using the proposed algorithm outperforms the hybrid A star, artificial potential field, and decision algorithms.