Global Path Planning and Path-Following for Wheeled Mobile Robot Using a Novel Control Structure Based on a Vision Sensor

Abstract

This paper presents a novel design for the kinematic control structure of the wheeled mobile robot (WMR) path planning and path-following. The proposed system is focused on the implementation of practical real-time model-free algorithms based on visual servoing. The mainframe of this study is to implement a novel kinematic control structure based on visual sevoing and hybrid algorithms in real-time mobile robot applications. First, the structure of the proposed algorithm based on the visual information extracted from an overhead camera has been addressed. Then, the classification process of robot position and orientation, target, and obstacles has been addressed. Second, the path planning algorithms’ initial parameters and obstacles-free path coordinates have been determined by visual information extracted from images in real time. In this step, the interval type-2 fuzzy inference (IT2FIS) algorithm and various algorithms used in path planning have been compared and their performances have been analyzed. The third stage handled the path-following process using a novel control structure for keeping up the robot on the generated path. In this step, the proposed approach is compared with fuzzy Type-1/Type-2 and fuzzy-PID control algorithms, and their results have been analyzed statistically. The proposed system has been successfully implemented on several maps. The experimental results show that the developed design is valid in generating collision-free paths efficiently and consistently and able to guide the robot to follow the path in real time.