A time-dependent motion planning system for mobile service robots in dynamic social environments

In this paper, we propose a time-dependent motion planning system for mobile service robots in dynamic social environments using the socio-spatio-temporal characteristics of the humans and an online trajectory planning technique. The main idea of the proposed algorithm is to incorporate the human position, motion related to the robot, time-dependent information and social cues into the conventional timed elastic band technique, and proposed the time-dependent timed elastic band (TDTEB) model. We evaluate the developed model through a series of simulation experiments. The simulation results show that the proposed framework is fully capable of autonomously driving the mobile robot to avoid the individual humans in dynamic social environments, providing the safety and comfort for the humans and the socially acceptable behaviors for the mobile robot. © 2021 IEEE.