Probabilistic Higher-Order Velocity Obstacle for Dynamic Collision Avoidance in Uncertain Environments

Autonomous systems like unmanned aircraft systems are touted as front-runners in terms of efficiency and agility in challenging operations like emergency response. The ability of autonomous agents in such systems to avoid collisions with dynamic obstacles while navigating through an obstacle-cluttered environment is critical for success in any mission. In addition to that, further challenges are posed by environments with uncertainties in obstacles’ motion, sensing, and occluded regions. To this end, a higher-order velocity obstacle–based novel motion planner is presented in this paper in a probabilistic setup for smooth, collision-free navigation of the agent with acceleration constraints in uncertain, unstructured environments with an element of anticipation for the future environment. The effectiveness of the developed algorithm for safe, collision-free, and smooth navigation of the agent is investigated in simulation studies in two different kinds of environments, one with known trajectories of obstacles and the other with unknown maneuvering trajectories of obstacles. Extensive simulation studies are performed in the presence of dynamic obstacles to elucidate the performance of the proposed algorithm on four crucial parameters—mission time, computational time, minimum obstacle distance, and an overall control effort under varied obstacle densities. With satisfactory performance in all these aspects, the developed algorithm possesses strong potential for real-time implementation.