A gradient method can provide a global optimal path in indoor environments. However, the optimal path can be often generated in narrow areas despite a sufficient wide area which lead to safe navigation. This paper presents a novel approach to path planning for safe navigation of a mobile robot. The proposed algorithm extracts empty regions using a ray-casting method and then generates temporary waypoints in wider regions in order to reach the goal fast and safely. The experimental results show that the proposed method can generate paths in the wide regions in most cases and the robot can reach the goal safely at high speeds.

The most important thing for navigation of a mobile robot is to find the most suitable path and avoid the obstacles in the static and dynamic environment. This paper presents a method to search the optimal path in start space extended to time domain with considering a velocity and a direction of moving obstacles. A modified version of A* algorithm has been applied for path planning in this work and proposed a method of path search to avoid a collision with moving obstacle in space-tim domain with a velocity and an orientation of obstacles. The velocity and the direction for moving obstacle are assumed as linear form. The simulation result shows that a mobile robot navigates safely among moving obstacles of constant linear velocity. This work can be applied for not only a moving robot but also a legged humanoid robot and all fields where the path planning is required.

Path planing method for an autonomous mobile robot is considered. For the practical applications, the simplified local potential field methods are applied under the constraints of the driving condition. To improve the performance, the fuzzy-approximated linear function method is also used.