Control of Mobile Robots for Collision Avoidance

From fully autonomous warehouses to farms lacking labour; the presence of mobile robots has increased significantly. These mobile robots are commonly found in the industrial sector, where they are typically used in automating tasks. While traversing through work environments, these mobile robots must be capable of avoiding and efficiently circumnavigating both moving and stationary obstacles. To help mitigate these issues, control engineering methods are usually utilized. In this paper, we analyze two different types of mobile robots, namely holonomic and non-holonomic robots. In addition, we utilize three different control methods, namely, model predictive control (MPC), nonlinear model predictive control (NMPC), and virtual force method (VFM). Conclusively, we perform a comparative analysis of all three control methods using a variety of quantitative metrics.