This paper describes a nonholonomic robotic wheeled vehicle ripple tentacle motion planning method, aiming to improve the vehicle's trajectory smoothness and avoid frequent weight parameters adjustment in different environments. In the regular tentacle motion planning algorithm, the planning result is selected among the drivable tentacles using a weighted sum cost function. Though the method is simple and easy to understand, it is difficult to adjust the weighted coefficients in different environments. To solve this problem, a geometrical ripple tentacles technique is used to choose a tentacle as a sub-optimal path. Compared with the regular tentacles algorithm, the proposed ripple tentacle algorithm can get a better performance in vehicle's trajectory smoothness with an acceptable runtime expense. And another two traits can also distinguish this method: (a) it can avoid weight parameter adjustment in different environments and varied vehicle's states, and (b) it can be used in both unknown environment and partly known environment with goal point and global reference path. In the totally unknown environment, it acts as a pure obstacle avoidance algorithm, and when there is a global path, it can follow the reference path and avoid hazards simultaneously. © 2012 IEEE.