Hybrid Motion Planner Integrating Global Voronoi Diagrams and Local Velocity Obstacle Method

Global and local path planning are a classic research field in robotics and are key elements for the devel- opment of automated warehouse. Velocity Obstacle (VO) and Voronoi Diagrams (VD) are well known methods in autonomous navigation. VO provides for each autonomous vehicle a set of available velocities ensuring collision-free trajectory for multi- robot systems, whereas VD is a geometrical space subdivision used to compute paths furthest away from obstacles. In this paper we will focus on the design of a distributed navigation architecture aiming at integrating to integrate VO, as a local planner and VD as a global planner, to provides efficient collision-free and safe maneuver for each agent belonging to the fleet. The approach is validated in simulation using ROS and Gazebo as a virtual robot development environment.