Path planning of mobile robot under expected radiation dose

Abstract

To solve the problem concerning the optimal path of robots in nuclear radiation environments, we propose herein an improved smooth A* algorithm to improve the smoothness of the path while satisfying the robot radiation protection requirements. This algorithm comprehensively considers factors, such as the dose rate of the nuclear radiation field, obstacles, path length, and number of inflection points, and the cost of absorbed dose, by introducing obstacle weighting and smoothing optimization; this significantly improves the search efficiency and path quality. A simulation experiment initially shows that when compared with the traditional A* algorithm, the improved A* algorithm without obstacle weighting and smoothing optimization reduces the total dose cost of the path generated by more than 45% under the obstacle-free and obstacle scenes. After introduction of obstacle weighting and smoothing optimization, the search efficiency is increased by 11.8%, and the smoothness is increased by 52.9%. Therefore, the proposed algorithm meets the design requirements.

Keywords

• nuclear radiation environment
• mobile robot
• path planning
• smooth a* algorithm
• obstacle weighting