Coordination control and obstacle avoidance for a team of mobile robots in unknown environment

Abstract

This paper presents a dual-level control structure for controlling a mobile robot and/or a team of mobile robots to navigate through an unknown (static or dynamic) environment. The higher-level controller operates in cooperation with robot's state estimation and mapping algorithm, extended Kalman filter - simultaneous localisation and mapping (EKF-SLAM), and the lower-level controller (PID) controls the motion of the robot when it encounters an obstacle and manoeuvres the robot around the obstacle/s. The higher-level controller jumps in as soon as the robot is out of the obstacle range and moves the robot to the goal. The obstacle avoidance technique involves a novel approach to calculate the rebound angle. The experimental results show that the proposed dual-level control structure can be effectively used to manoeuvre a mobile robot or a team of mobile robots to navigate through a dynamic environment.