Obstacle avoidance methods for differential drive robots

This paper presents an extended obstacle avoidance approach for non-holonomic mobile robots with differential drive transmission, focusing on collaborative environments where human operators and robots share the workspace. Two distinct avoidance strategies are evaluated: one combining translational and rotational movements for greater flexibility, and the other relying solely on rotational maneuvers to ensure smoother trajectory adjustments. The performance of these strategies is assessed through simulations in scenarios involving both static and dynamic obstacles. The first test shows a mobile robot navigating along a path where an obstacle is located, while in the second the mobile robot is fixed at a target position and an obstacle interferes. The robot’s direction only changes when the obstacle enters the zone of influence. The possibility of using a rectangular kinematic structure with a tip at the front of the robot is introduced. Future developments will focus on implementing these strategies within a mobile manipulator system, comprising a differential drive base and a 6-DOF robotic arm, to expand the algorithm’s applicability to advanced robotic configurations.