Fotouhi, Reza2007-01-032013-01-042007-01-042013-01-042006-122006-12-22December 2http://hdl.handle.net/10388/etd-01032007-132908In order for a mobile robot to complete its task it must be able to plan and follow a trajectory. Depending on the environment, it may also be necessary to follow a given velocity profile. This is known as temporal planning. Temporal planning can be used to minimize time of motion and to avoid moving obstacles. For example, assuming the mobile robot is an intelligent wheelchair, it must follow a prescribed path (sidewalk, hospital corridor) while following a strict speed limit (slowing down for pedestrians, cars). Computing a realistic velocity profile for a mobile robot is a challenging task due to a large number of kinematic and dynamic constraints that are involved. Unlike prior works which performed temporal planning in a 2-dimensional environment, this thesis presents a new temporal planning algorithm in a 3-dimensional environment. This algorithm is implemented on a wheeled mobile robot that is to be used in a healthcare setting. The path planning stage is accomplished by using cubic spline functions. A rudimentary trajectory is created by assigning an arbitrary time to each segment of the path. This trajectory is made feasible by applying a number of constraints and using a linear scaling technique. When a velocity profile is provided, a non-linear time scaling technique is used to fit the robot’s center linear velocity to the specified velocity. A method for avoiding moving obstacles is also implemented. Both simulation and experimental results for the wheeled mobile robot are presented. These results show good agreement with each other. For both simulation and experimentation, six different examples of paths in the Engineering Building of the University of Saskatchewan, were used. Experiments were performed using the PowerBot mobile robot in the robotics lab at the University of Saskatchewan.en-USWheeled Mobile RobotsTemporal PlanningKinematicsDynamicsTrajectory Planningtext