Resilient Timed Elastic Band Planner for Collision-Free Navigation in Unknown Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a resilient trajectory planning method that combines hybrid A*, soft constraints smoothing, and dynamic Voronoi maps to improve collision-free navigation in unknown, obstacle-dense environments, ensuring real-time performance.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel resilient trajectory replanning approach integrating hybrid A*, soft constraints smoothing, and dynamic Voronoi maps for improved navigation in complex environments.

Findings

20% reduction in traverse distance and time in high obstacle density environments

Enhanced trajectory planning consistency and convergence speed

Effective real-time navigation in unstructured terrains

Abstract

In autonomous navigation, trajectory replanning, refinement, and control command generation are essential for effective motion planning. This paper presents a resilient approach to trajectory replanning addressing scenarios where the initial planner's solution becomes infeasible. The proposed method incorporates a hybrid A* algorithm to generate feasible trajectories when the primary planner fails and applies a soft constraints-based smoothing technique to refine these trajectories, ensuring continuity, obstacle avoidance, and kinematic feasibility. Obstacle constraints are modelled using a dynamic Voronoi map to improve navigation through narrow passages. This approach enhances the consistency of trajectory planning, speeds up convergence, and meets real-time computational requirements. In environments with around 30\% or higher obstacle density, the ratio of free space before and after placing new obstacles, the Resilient Timed Elastic Band (RTEB) planner achieves approximately 20\% reduction in traverse distance, traverse time, and control effort compared to the Timed Elastic Band (TEB) planner and Nonlinear Model Predictive Control (NMPC) planner. These improvements demonstrate the RTEB planner's potential for application in field robotics, particularly in agricultural and industrial environments, where navigating unstructured terrain is crucial for ensuring efficiency and operational resilience.