Steps Towards Safe Navigation in Open and Dynamic Environments

Overview & Synopsis

Autonomous navigation in open and dynamic environments is an important challenge, requiring to solve several difficult research problems located on the cutting edge of the state of the art. Basically, these problems can be classified into three main categories: SLAM in dynamic environments; Detection, characterisation, and behaviour prediction of the potential moving obstacles; On-line motion planning and safe navigation decision based on world state predictions. This paper addresses some aspects of these problems and presents our latest approaches and results. The solutions we have implemented are mainly based on the followings paradigms: Characterisation and motion prediction of the observed moving entities using Bayesian programming; On-line goal-oriented navigation decisions using the Partial Motion Planning (PMP) paradigm.