Introduction The aim of this project was to create a simulation
of two moving vehicles that will avoid colliding.
The simulation exists in a two dimensional real co-ordinate system.
This means that the vehicles are able to move in any direction and do
not snap to a grid position. In a grid system the vehicles can only
move to a spare grid slot around them. However, in a real co-ordinate
system there are an infinite number of places to move to in your vicinity.
I have been working on solving this problem since it arose during the
development of YARTS. At that time I was trying to make a reactive
decision; once a predicted collision was detected then try and avoid
it.
This new solution predicts the path to the target and if there is a
collision then it will avoid it. This approach can only be taken in
a situation where all the
information is known about the system. For example in RTS
games the world is completely known and the only variable is the user
interaction, but the user can only move a vehicle in the way the game
lets them. So everytime the user moves a vehicle (in a legal move) then
the system recalculates the predicted positions and paths.
The results of my project can be seen above. The speed is set as a
constant so that once the vehicles reach their target they do not stop
but continue travelling in circles. This further demonstrates the collision
avoidance system. If you set the targets of both vehicles to the same
position, they will travel in circles avoiding each other.
However, there are two ways of making them crash:
- If you set them to face each other at close range there is an unavoidable
collision. At this point the simulation resets.
- This problem can also occur when the simulation is running and arises
when the system recalculates the next section of the predicted path.
The system assumes that the vehicle is travelling straight until the
end of the present second. This means that although the previous course
had the two vehicles avoiding each other (probably turning to avoid
each other), the recalculated path has both vehicles advancing in
a straight line and then taking avoiding action. So if the vehicles
are close enough and facing each other when this recalculation happens
they will crash and the simulation will reset. The problem is (quite)
easy to solve by following the previous path until the recalculation
reaches creates valid paths. This will always work as the new paths
are always calulated whist there are still predicted positions in
the previous path.
This is still work in progress but as I am going on holiday
soon it will have to take a back seat till the other 101 things in my
life are sorted.
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