Page 214 - Designing Autonomous Mobile Robots : Inside the Mindo f an Intellegent Machine

Instilling Pain, Fear and Confidence

more accurately. Even so, the very simple methods just discussed bring a great reward
in system performance.

Danger objects and force fields

If force field goal seeking is the preferred approach to navigation, then we need only
define a transient danger object. This object is similar to a fixed obstacle, but with a
repelling force that is variable. The repelling force serves the same purpose as the
danger cost of a path segment, and it should be incremented and decremented in much
the same manner.

Goal

Obstacle
Danger
Obstacle

Obstacle

Start

Figure 13.2. Placing danger objects on a force field map

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