This paper presents a local planning approach that is targeted for pseudo-omnidirectional vehicles: that is, vehicles that can drive sideways and rotate on the spot. This local planner—MSDU–is based on optimal control and formulates a non-linear optimization problem formulation that exploits the omni-motion capabilities of the vehicle to drive the vehicle to the goal in a smooth and efficient manner while avoiding obstacles and singularities. MSDU is designed for a real platform for mobile manipulation where one k…