Circular Formation Control with Collision Avoidance Based on Probabilistic Position

In this paper,we study the circular formation problem for the second-order multi-agent systems in a plane,in which the agents maintain a circular formation based on a probabilistic position.A distributed hybrid control protocol based on a probabilistic position is designed to achieve circular formation stabilization and consensus.In the current framework,the mobile agents follow the following rules:1)the agent must follow a circular trajectory;2)all the agents in the same circular trajectory must have the same direction.The formation control objective includes two parts:1)drive all the agents to the circular formation;2)avoid a collision.Based on Lyapunov methods,convergence and stability of the proposed circular formation protocol are provided.Due to limitations in collision avoidance,we extend the results to LaSalle’s invariance principle.Some theoretical examples and numerical simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Driver Intent Prediction and Collision Avoidance With Barrier Functions

For autonomous vehicles and driver assist systems,path planning and collision avoidance algorithms benefit from accurate predictions of future location of other vehicles and intent of their drivers.In the literature,the algorithms that provide driver intent belong to two categories:those that use physics based models with some type of filtering,and machine learning based approaches.In this paper we employ barrier functions(BF)to decide driver intent.BFs are typically used to prove safety by establishing forward invariance of an admissible set.Here,we decide if the“target”vehicle is violating one or more possibly fictitious(i.e.,non-physical)barrier constraints determined based on the context provided by the road geometry.The algorithm has a very small computational footprint and better false positive and negative rates than some of the alternatives.The predicted intent is then used by a control barrier function(CBF)based collision avoidance system to prevent unnecessary interventions,for either an autonomous or human-driven vehicle.

Cost-effective distributed FTFC for uncertain nonholonomic mobile robot fleet with collision avoidance and connectivity preservation

In this paper,the fault-tolerant formation control(FTFC)problem is investigated for a group of uncertain nonholonomic mobile robots with limited communication ranges and unpredicted actuator faults,where the communication between the robots is in a directed one-to-one way.In order to guarantee the connectivity preservation and collision avoidance among the robots,some properly chosen performance functions are incorporated into the controller to per-assign the asymmetrical bounds for relative distance and bearing angle between each pair of adjacent mobile robots.Particularly,the resultant control scheme remains at a costeffective level because its design does not use any velocity information from neighbors,any prior knowledge of system nonlinearities or any nonlinear approximator to account for them despite the presence of modeling uncertainties,unknown external disturbances,and unexpected actuator faults.Meanwhile,each follower is derived to track the leader with the tracking errors regarding relative distance and bearing angle subject to prescribed transient and steady-state performance guarantees,respectively.Moreover,all the closed-loop signals are ensured to be ultimately uniformly bounded.Finally,a numerical example is simulated to verify the effectiveness of this methodology.

Summarizing vehicle driving decision-making methods on vulnerable road user collision avoidance

With the development of intelligent vehicles and autonomous driving technology,the safety of vulnerable road user(VRU)in traffic has been more guaranteed,and many research achievements have been made in the key area of collision avoidance decision-making methods.In this paper,the knowledge mapping method is used to mine the available literature in depth,and it is found that the research focus has shifted from the traditional accident cause analysis to emerging deep learning and virtual reality technology.This paper summarizes research on the three core dimensions of environmental perception,behavior cognition and collision avoidance decision-making in intelligent vehicle systems.In terms of perception,accurate identification of pedestrians and cyclists in complex environments is a major demand for VRU perception;in terms of behavior cognition,the coupling of VRU intention identification and motion trajectory prediction and other multiple factors needs further research;in terms of decision-making,the intention identification and trajectory prediction of collision objects are not included in the risk assessment model,and there is a lack of exploration specifically for cyclists'collision risk.On this basis,this paper provides guidance for the improvement of traffic safety of contemporary VRU under the conditions of intelligent and connected transportation.

Simulation and Field Testing of Multiple Vehicles Collision Avoidance Algorithms

A global planning algorithm for intelligent vehicles is designed based on the A* algorithm, which provides intelligent vehicles with a global path towards their destinations. A distributed real-time multiple vehicle collision avoidance(MVCA)algorithm is proposed by extending the reciprocal n-body collision avoidance method. MVCA enables the intelligent vehicles to choose their destinations and control inputs independently,without needing to negotiate with each other or with the coordinator. Compared to the centralized trajectory-planning algorithm, MVCA reduces computation costs and greatly improves the robustness of the system. Because the destination of each intelligent vehicle can be regarded as private, which can be protected by MVCA, at the same time MVCA can provide a real-time trajectory planning for intelligent vehicles. Therefore,MVCA can better improve the safety of intelligent vehicles. The simulation was conducted in MATLAB, including crossroads scene simulation and circular exchange position simulation. The results show that MVCA behaves safely and reliably. The effects of latency and packet loss on MVCA are also statistically investigated through theoretically formulating broadcasting process based on one-dimensional Markov chain. The results uncover that the tolerant delay should not exceed the half of deciding cycle of trajectory planning, and shortening the sending interval could alleviate the negative effects caused by the packet loss to an extent. The cases of short delay(< 100100 ms) and low packet loss(< 5%) can bring little influence to those trajectory planning algorithms that only depend on V2 V to sense the context, but the unpredictable collision may occur if the delay and packet loss are further worsened. The MVCA was also tested by a real intelligent vehicle, the test results prove the operability of MVCA.

A Novel Multi-agent Formation Control Law With Collision Avoidance

In this paper a stable formation control law that simultaneously ensures collision avoidance has been proposed.It is assumed that the communication graph is undirected and connected.The proposed formation control law is a combination of the consensus term and the collision avoidance term(CAT).The first order consensus term is derived for the proposed model,while ensuring the Lyapunov stability.The consensus term creates and maintains the desired formation shape,while the CAT avoids the collision.During the collision avoidance,the potential function based CAT makes the agents repel from each other.This unrestricted repelling magnitude cannot ensure the graph connectivity at the time of collision avoidance.Hence we have proposed a formation control law,which ensures this connectivity even during the collision avoidance.This is achieved by the proposed novel adaptive potential function.The potential function adapts itself,with the online tuning of the critical variable associated with it.The tuning has been done based on the lower bound of the critical variable,which is derived from the proposed connectivity property.The efficacy of the proposed scheme has been validated using simulations done based on formations of six and thirty-two agents respectively.

A Situation-Aware Collision Avoidance Strategy for Car-Following

Abstract--In this paper, we discuss how to develop an appropriate collision avoidance strategy for car-following. This strategy aims to keep a good balance between traffic safety and efficiency while also taking into consideration the unavoidable uncertainty of position/speed perception/measurement of vehicles and other drivers. Both theoretical analysis and numerical testing results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Index Terms--Collision avoidance, safety, traffic efficiency, uncertainty.

Local Path Planning and Tracking Control of Vehicle Collision Avoidance System

Automotive collision avoidance technology can effectively avoid the accidents caused by dangerous traffic conditions or driver's manipulation errors.Moreover,it can promote the development of autonomous driving for intelligent vehicle in intelligent transportation.We present a collision avoidance system,which is composed of an evasive trajectory planner and a path following controller.Considering the stability of the vehicle in the conflict-free process,the evasive trajectory planner is designed by polynomial parametric method and optimized by genetic algorithm.The path following controller is proposed to make the car drive along the designed path by controlling the vehicle's lateral movement.Simulation results show that the vehicle with the proposed controller has good stability in the collision process,and it can ensure the vehicle driving in accordance with the planned trajectory at different speeds.The research results can provide a certain basis for the research and development of automotive collision avoidance technology.

Collision Avoidance of Cooperative Dual Redundant Manipulators

Dual redundant manipulators are extremely useful for tasks in dangerous or space environments, but efficient and real time coordinated control is hard to achieve. Collision avoidance between two cooperative manipulators is vital to the successful applications of dual redundant manipulators. Although methods based on the distance function have been demonstrated simple and efficient, different collision avoidance points can usually produce completely different results and even failure. The paper discussed the choices of collision avoidance points and proposed a novel method for the choosing of those points. The method is testified by simulation results of two redundant planar manipulators.

COLLISION AVOIDANCE DECISION-MAKING MODEL OF MULTI-AGENTS IN VIRTUAL DRIVING ENVIRONMENT WITH ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS

Collision avoidance decision-making models of multiple agents in virtual driving environment are studied. Based on the behavioral characteristics and hierarchical structure of the collision avoidance decision-making in real life driving, delphi approach and mathematical statistics method are introduced to construct pair-wise comparison judgment matrix of collision avoidance decision choices to each collision situation. Analytic hierarchy process （AHP） is adopted to establish the agents＇ collision avoidance decision-making model. To simulate drivers＇ characteristics, driver factors are added to categorize driving modes into impatient mode, normal mode, and the cautious mode. The results show that this model can simulate human＇s thinking process, and the agents in the virtual environment can deal with collision situations and make decisions to avoid collisions without intervention. The model can also reflect diversity and uncertainly of real life driving behaviors, and solves the multi-objective, multi-choice ranking priority problem in multi-vehicle collision scenarios. This collision avoidance model of multi-agents model is feasible and effective, and can provide richer and closer-to-life virtual scene for driving simulator, reflecting real-life traffic environment more truly, this model can also promote the practicality of driving simulator.

Radar-Based Collision Avoidance for Unmanned Surface Vehicles'

Unmanned surface vehicles （USVs） have become a focus of research because of their extensive applications. To ensure safety and reliability and to perform complex tasks autonomously, USVs are required to possess accurate perception of the environment and effective collision avoidance capabilities. To achieve these, investigation into real- time marine radar target detection and autonomous collision avoidance technologies is required, aiming at solving the problems of noise jamming, uneven brightness, target loss, and blind areas in marine radar images. These technologies should also satisfy the requirements of real-time and reliability related to high navigation speeds of USVs. Therefore, this study developed an embedded collision avoidance system based on the marine radar, investigated a highly real-time target detection method which contains adaptive smoothing algorithm and robust segmentation algorithm, developed a stable and reliable dynamic local environment model to ensure the safety of USV navigation, and constructed a collision avoidance algorithm based on velocity obstacle （V-obstacle） which adjusts the USV＇s heading and speed in real-time. Sea trials results in multi-obstacle avoidance firstly demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed avoidance system, and then verify its great adaptability and relative stability when a USV sailing in a real and complex marine environment. The obtained results will improve the intelligent level of USV and guarantee the safety of USV independent sailing.

Collision avoidance planning in multi-robot system based on improved artificial potential field and rules

For real-time and distributed features of multi-robot system,the strategy of combining the improved artificial potential field method and the rules based on priority is proposed to study the collision avoidance planning in multi-robot systems. The improved artificial potential field based on simulated annealing algorithm satisfactorily overcomes the drawbacks of traditional artificial potential field method,so that robots can find a local collision-free path in the complex environment. According to the movement vector trail of robots,collisions between robots can be detected,thereby the collision avoidance rules can be obtained. Coordination between robots by the priority based rules improves the real-time property of multi-robot system. The combination of these two methods can help a robot to find a collision-free path from a starting point to the goal quickly in an environment with many obstacles. The feasibility of the proposed method is validated in the VC-based simulated environment.

A new collision avoidance model for pedestrian dynamics

The pedestrians can only avoid collisions passively under the action of forces during simulations using the social force model, which may lead to unnatural behaviors. This paper proposes an optimization-based model for the avoidance of collisions, where the social repulsive force is removed in favor of a search for the quickest path to destination in the pedestrian＇s vision field. In this way, the behaviors of pedestrians are governed by changing their desired walking direction and desired speed. By combining the critical factors of pedestrian movement, such as positions of the exit and obstacles and velocities of the neighbors, the choice of desired velocity has been rendered to a discrete optimization problem. Therefore,it is the self-driven force that leads pedestrians to a free path rather than the repulsive force, which means the pedestrians can actively avoid collisions. The new model is verified by comparing with the fundamental diagram and actual data. The simulation results of individual avoidance trajectories and crowd avoidance behaviors demonstrate the reasonability of the proposed model.

Nonlinear control of spacecraft formation flying with disturbance rejection and collision avoidance

A nonlinear controller for disturbances rejection and collision avoidance is proposed for spacecraft formation flying.The formation flying is described by a nonlinear model with the J2 perturbation and atmospheric drag. Based on the theory of the state-dependent Riccati equation（SDRE）, a finite time nonlinear control law is developed for the nonlinear dynamics involved in formation flying. Then, a compensative internal mode（IM） control law is added to eliminate disturbances.These two control laws compose a finite time nonlinear tracking controller with disturbances rejection. Moreover, taking safety requirements into account, the repulsive control law is incorporated in the composite controller to perform collision avoidance manoeuvres. A numerical simulation is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.Compared to the conventional control method, the proposed method provides better performance in the presence of the obstacles and external disturbances.

Multi-spacecraft Intelligent Orbit Phasing Control Considering Collision Avoidance

This paper proposes an intelligent low-thrust orbit phasing control method for multiple spacecraft by simultaneously considering fuel optimization and collision avoidance. Firstly,the minimum-fuel orbit phasing control database is generated by the indirect method associated with the homotopy technique. Then,a deep network representing the minimum-fuel solution is trained. To avoid collision for multiple spacecraft,an artificial potential function is introduced in the collision-avoidance controller. Finally,an intelligent orbit phasing control method by combining the minimum-fuel neural network controller and the collision-avoidance controller is proposed. Numerical results show that the proposed intelligent orbit phasing control is valid for the multi-satellite constellation initialization without collision.

Ultra-low power anti-crosstalk collision avoidance light detection and ranging using chaotic pulse position modulation approach

A novel concept of collision avoidance single-photon light detection and ranging（LIDAR） for vehicles has been demonstrated, in which chaotic pulse position modulation is applied on the transmitted laser pulses for robust anti-crosstalk purposes. Besides, single-photon detectors（SPD） and time correlated single photon counting techniques are adapted, to sense the ultra-low power used for the consideration of compact structure and eye safety. Parameters including pulse rate, discrimination threshold, and number of accumulated pulses have been thoroughly analyzed based on the detection requirements, resulting in specified receiver operating characteristics curves. Both simulation and indoor experiments were performed to verify the excellent anti-crosstalk capability of the presented collision avoidance LIDAR despite ultra-low transmitting power.

Method for Collision Avoidance in Spacecraft Rendezvous Problems with Space Objects in a Phasing Orbit

As the number of space objects(SO)increases,collision avoidance problem in the rendezvous tasks or reconstellation of satellites with SO has been paid more attention,and the dangerous area of a possible collision should be derived.In this paper,a maneuvering method is proposed for avoiding collision with a space debris object in the phasing orbit of the initial optimal solution.Accordingly,based on the plane of eccentricity vector components,relevant dangerous area which is bounded by two parallel lines is formulated.The axises of eccentricity vector system pass through the end of eccentricity vector of phasing orbit in the optimal solution,and orientation of axis depends on the latitude argument where a collision will occur.The dangerous area is represented especially with the graphical dialogue,and it allows to find a compromise between the SO avoiding and the fuel consumption reduction.The proposed method to solve the collision avoidance problem provides simplicity to calculate rendezvous maneuvers,and possibility to avoid collisions from several collisions or from“slow”collisions in a phasing orbit,when the protected spacecraft and the object fly dangerously close to each other for a long period.

Collision avoidance for a mobile robot based on radial basis function hybrid force control technique

Collision avoidance is always difficult in the planning path for a mobile robot. In this paper, the virtual force field between a mobile robot and an obstacle is formed and regulated to maintain a desired distance by hybrid force control algorithm. Since uncertainties from robot dynamics and obstacle degrade the performance of a collision avoidance task, intelligent control is used to compensate for the uncertainties. A radial basis function （RBF） neural network is used to regulate the force field of an accurate distance between a robot and an obstacle in this paper and then simulation studies are conducted to confirm that the proposed algorithm is effective.

Real-Time Arm Animation with Natural Collision Avoidance

A novel approach to realistic collision-free animation of the upper limb was proposed.According to the obstacle-avoidance strategy of human hand,the movement trajectory was computed by manipulability model and minimum-jerk based interpolation.In each key frame,an improved in～verse kinematics method was adopted to obtain a believable posture of the upper limb.By comparing with the real movement data obtained from the motion capture device,the resultant animation was testified to be natural.This method can be performed in interactive time,and therefore is applicable in animation edit and control of virtual humans.

Multi-Object Tracking Based on Segmentation and Collision Avoidance

An approach to track multiple objects in crowded scenes with long-term partial occlusions is proposed. Tracking-by-detection is a successful strategy to address the task of tracking multiple objects in unconstrained scenarios,but an obvious shortcoming of this method is that most information available in image sequences is simply ignored due to thresholding weak detection responses and applying non-maximum suppression. This paper proposes a multi-label conditional random field（ CRF） model which integrates the superpixel information and detection responses into a unified energy optimization framework to handle the task of tracking multiple targets. A key characteristic of the model is that the pairwise potential is constructed to enforce collision avoidance between objects,which can offer the advantage to improve the tracking performance in crowded scenes. Experiments on standard benchmark databases demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art tracking-by-detection methods.