Experimental study of terrain coverage of an autonomous chaotic mobile robot

Abstract

In this work, the design and implementation of an autonomous mobile robot that can cover given workspaces, is presented. The motion commands are produced by a bit sequence, which is created from the combination, through an XOR function, of two separate chaotic random bitstreams. The implementation of the proposed method is performed by a robotic platform which is controlled through a microcontroller (Arduino Uno). Also, an ultrasonic sensor is inserted into the robotic platform with basic aim to locate and avoid the boundaries of the workspace. The robot’s behavior is studied experimentally in different scenarios with various starting positions. The experimental results confirm that this approach, with an appropriate sensor for avoiding collision with the boundaries, can obtain very satisfactory results in regard to the fast scanning of the robot’s workspace with unpredictable way.