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Artificial Potential Field Navigation

Interactive 3D simulation of artificial potential field navigation: a mobile robot descends the gradient of an attractive goal potential and repulsive obstacle potentials, with a live vector field, tunable gains, and real local-minimum traps.

Robotics & Kinematics3DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted

This simulator drives a mobile robot with the artificial potential field method: a scalar field built from an attractive bowl around the goal and repulsive walls around every obstacle, with the robot simply following the negative gradient downhill. A live 3D vector field shows the direction the robot would move from any point on the ground plane, the influence radius and gain sliders let you reshape that field in real time, and the status panel flags the method's signature failure mode — a local minimum where the attractive and repulsive pulls cancel before the robot reaches the goal.

⚙ Under the hood

Watch a mobile robot navigate by descending the gradient of an artificial potential field — an attractive bowl around the goal plus repulsive walls around obstacles — with a live 3D vector field, tunable gains, and real-time local-minimum trap detection.

roboticspath-planninggradient-descentobstacle-avoidancecontrol-systems

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install