OPMOR: optimization of motion control algorithms for mobile robots

Abstract

OPMOR is a hierarchical, interactive, window-based, graphical oriented software environment for the specification, simulation, performance evaluation, and optimization of motion control algorithms for mobile robots. The software environment allows the definition of the robot operating environment, the robot sensor, the robot geometry, and the specification, development, and testing of sensor-based mobile robot control software. A feature of OPMOR is the simulation of real sensors, real operating environments, and actual robots. Robot control software developed under OPMOR runs with minor modifications on two mobile robots existing at the Madrid Polytechnic University. The software environment has its own graphical user interface implemented in X-Windows. Structured, unstructured, static, and dynamic environments can be modeled with OPMOR. Although OPMOR can be used to simulate any motion control paradigm, the authors successfully used it to study reactive systems using behavioral control strategies. Many configurations for the operating environment have been tried using a wide variety of algorithms and implementations, and some results are presented. >