An inevitable collision state for a robotic system can be defined as a state for which, no matter what the future trajectory followed by the system is, a collision with an obstacle eventually occurs. An inevitable collision state takes into account the dynamics of both the system and the obstacles, fixed or moving. The main contribution of this paper is to lay down and explore this novel concept (and the companion concept of inevitable collision obstacle). Formal definitions of the inevitable collision states and obstacles are given. Properties fundamental for their characterisation are established. This concept is very general and can be useful both for navigation and motion planning purposes (for its own safety, a robotic system should never find itself in an inevitable collision state). To illustrate the interest of this concept, it is applied to a problem of safe motion planning for a robotic system subject to sensing constraints in a partially known environment (ie that may contain unexpected obstacles). In safe motion planning, the issue is to compute motions for which it is guaranteed that, no matter what happens at execution time, the robotic system never finds itself in a situation where there is no way for it to avoid collision with an unexpected obstacle.

This paper presents CC Steer, a steering method for car-like vehicles, ie an algorithm planning paths in the absence of obstacles. CC Steer is the first to compute paths with (a) continuous curvature, (b) upper-bounded curvature, and (c) upper-bounded curvature derivative. CC Steer also verifies a topological property that ensures that when it is used within a general motion planning scheme, it yields a complete collision-free path planner. The coupling of CC Steer with a general planning scheme yields a path planner that computes collision-free paths verifying the properties mentioned above. Accordingly, a car-like vehicle can follow such paths without ever having to stop in order to reorient its front wheels. Besides, such paths can be followed with a nominal speed which is proportional to the curvature derivative limit. The path computed by CC Steer are made up of line segments, circular arcs and clothoid arcs. They are not optimal in length. However, it is shown that they converge toward the optimal 'Reeds and Shepp' paths when the curvature derivative upper-bound tends to infinity. The capabilities of CC Steer to serve as an efficient steering method within two general planning schemes are also demonstrated.

This paper addresses the problem of motion planning (MP) in dynamic environments. It is first argued that dynamic environments impose a real-time constraint upon MP: it has a limited time only to compute a motion, the time available being a function of the dynamicity of the environment. Now, given the intrinsic complexity of MP, computing a complete motion to the goal within the time available is impossible to achieve in most real situations. Partial Motion Planning (PMP) is the answer to this problem proposed in this paper. PMP is a motion planning scheme with an anytime flavor: when the time available is over, PMP returns the best partial motion to the goal computed so far. Like reactive navigation scheme, PMP faces a safety issue: what guarantee is there that the system will never end up in a critical situation yielding an inevitable collision? The answer proposed in this paper to this safety issue relies upon the concept of Inevitable Collision States (ICS). ICS takes into account the dynamics of both the system and the moving obstacles. By computing ICS-free partial motion, the system safety can be guaranteed. Application of PMP to the case of a car-like system in a dynamic environment is presented.

Reliable and efficient perception and reasoning in dynamic and densely cluttered environments are still major challenges for driver assistance systems. Most of today's systems use target tracking algorithms based on object models. They work quite well in simple environments such as freeways, where few potential obstacles have to be considered. However, these approaches usually fail in more complex environments featuring a large variety of potential obstacles, as is usually the case in urban driving situations. In this paper, we propose a new approach for robust perception and risk assessment in highly dynamic environments. This approach is called Bayesian occupancy filtering; it basically combines a four-dimensional occupancy grid representation of the obstacle state space with Bayesian filtering techniques.

Abstract-This paper addresses the problem of navigating a mobile robot with a limited field-of-view in a unknown dynamic environment. In such a situation, absolute motion safety, i.e. such that no collision will ever take place whatever happens, is impossible to guarantee. It is therefore settled for a weaker level of motion safety dubbed passive motion safety: it guarantees that, if a collision takes place, the robot will be at rest. Passive motion safety is tackled using a variant of the Inevitable Collision State (ICS) concept called Braking ICS, i.e. states such that, whatever the future braking trajectory of the robot, a collision occurs before it is at rest. Passive motion safety is readily obtained by avoiding Braking ICS at all times. Building upon an existing Braking ICS-Checker, i.e. an algorithm that checks if a given state is a Braking ICS or not, this paper presents a reactive collision avoidance scheme called PASSAVOID. The main contribution of this paper is the formal proof of PASSAVOID's passive motion safety. Experiments in simulation demonstrates how PASSAVOID operates.