Energy optimal path planning for wheeled mobile robots with circular obstacle

Abstract The energy optimal motion planning algorithm for a differential drive robot with a circular obstacle in the maneuver space is introduced in this article. Rather than the traditional unicycle model, a non‐canonical state space model of the kinematics of a wheeled mobile robot is used to formulate the optimal control problem. The necessary conditions for optimality are formally derived using calculus of variations, resulting in constraints for the costates when the inequality constraint become active, revealing that the controls are required to be continuous. The optimality conditions permit decomposing the motion planning problem in two independent segments: prior to and after activation of the inequality constraints. Analytical expressions for the evolving states and control are found to be a function of Jacobi elliptic functions, permitting reducing the optimal control problem to a root‐finding problem. A comprehensive parametric study is included to demonstrate the impact on the optimal trajectories by varying the radius of the obstacle. The study shows that there are three distinct maneuver strategies with respect to the size of the obstacle. Furthermore, by including entering and exit time as optimization variables, a methodology for generalizing the development to any given motion scenario is developed and numerically illustrated.