Sensor-based fuzzy navigation of an autonomous mobile robot in an indoor environment

Abstract

The work presented in this paper deals with the problem of navigating a mobile robot either in an unknown indoor environment or in a partially known one. A navigation method based on the combination of elementary behaviors has been developed for an unknown environment. Most of these behaviors are achieved by means of fuzzy inference systems. The proposed navigator combines two types of obstacle avoidance behaviors, one for the convex obstacles and one for the concave ones. In the case of a partially known environment, a hybrid method is used to exploit the advantages of global and local navigation strategies. The coordination of these strategies is based on a fuzzy inference system that involves an on-line comparison between the real scene and a memorized one. Both methods have been implemented on the miniature mobile robot Khepera ® which is equipped with rough sensors. The good results obtained illustrate the robustness of a fuzzy logic approach with regard to sensor imperfections.