Turning Circle-based Control Barrier Function for Efficient Collision Avoidance of Nonholonomic Vehicles

Abstract: This paper presents a new control barrier function (CBF) designed to improve the efficiency of collision avoidance for nonholonomic vehicles. Traditional CBFs typically rely on the shortest Euclidean distance to obstacles, overlooking the limited heading change ability of nonholonomic vehicles. This often leads to abrupt maneuvers and excessive speed reductions, which is not desirable and reduces the efficiency of collision avoidance. Our approach addresses these limitations by incorporating the distance to the turning circle, considering the vehicle's limited maneuverability imposed by its nonholonomic constraints. The proposed CBF is integrated with model predictive control (MPC) to generate more efficient trajectories compared to existing methods that rely solely on Euclidean distance-based CBFs. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through numerical simulations on unicycle vehicles and experiments with underactuated surface vehicles.