Shinko Electric Company, Ltd.

Sogo Security Services Co.

Sogo Securities Co., Ltd.

Yutaka Kanayama

A method of planning paths for autonomous carrier vehicles, such as a mobile robots, capable of planning curved paths consisting of cubic spirals smoother than those planned by conventional path planning methods. The path planned by the method of the invention is defined by one or two of cubic spirals with curvature expressed by a quadratic function of distance measured along the cubic spiral with zero curvatures at its opposite ends. The path is designed so that curvatures at the junctions are zero and the integral of the square of the derivative of curvature function between the opposite ends of the path is minimized. The mobile robot is able to travel very smoothly across the junctions when the integral of the square of the derivative of curvature is minimized.

Path planning method for mobile robots

A mobile robot navigating method for navigating an autonomous mobile robot utilizes a path planning unit, a posture control unit, a command signal converting unit, a current posture computing unit and a running mechanism, such as an autonomous carrier vehicle, capable of quickly and accurately controlling the mobile robot for steady running to a desired posture along a specified path. The mobile robot is controlled for running by a speed command including a desired speed for feed-forward control a speed correction for feed back control, and an angular velocity command including a desired angular velocity for feed-forward control and an angular velocity correction for feedback control. The mobile robot is controlled in a feed back and feed-forward control mode using the speed command and the angular velocity command so as to run steadily along an optimum path to a desired posture without meandering.

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Goleta, CA, United States of America

Yutaka Kanayama