Intelligent Fuzzy Logic based controller scheme for a mobile robot navigation

Abstract

The unhindered navigation of mobile robots in an unstructured and dynamic environment is constrained by uncertainty, unreliability of input information, and unpredictability issues that plague the sensors and the robot controller. One of the long standing challenges in modern day mobile robotics is instilling the ability and intelligence in robots to autonomously navigate their path, avoiding structured and unstructured obstacles in real-time. An effective way of structuring the navigation path is designing the robot controller by implementing behavioral based approaches. In this project, research work has been carried out on the different fuzzy techniques which can be implemented for the navigation of a wheeled mobile robot, especially in a crowded and unpredictably dynamic environment and in the midst of static as well as dynamic obstacles. In this project, individual robot behaviors and their action coordination are addressed using fuzzy logic. It uses sets of linguistic fuzzy rules to implement expert knowledge in various situations. Later, it has been shown that the fuzzy model of the robot controller far outweighs the traditional algorithm based approach towards design of a robot control system. The proposed fuzzy scheme consists of inputs from an array of sensors located at the front, sides and rear of the mobile robot, which provide information about distances between obstacles to the front, left, right and back of the robot and the fuzzy rule base is run over these inputs to actuate the motion of the left and right wheels of the robot as per the situtation encountered.