A mobile robot behavior based navigation architecture using a linear graph of passages as landmarks for path definition

• Authors: Lubnen Name Moussi;Marconi Kolm Madrid
• Venue: WSEAS Transactions on Systems and Control
• Year: 2010

In this work the authors present a mobile robot architecture design for real time autonomous navigation considering minimum requirements of hardware and computation. These requirements determine the use of simple sensors and minimum representation of the environment. The approach chosen was Behavior-Based for the design of the architecture and the behaviors. It is implemented under simulation of a differential wheels robot inside a 2D environment with a layout very close to a real situation for laboratories, offices and classrooms. The solution takes into consideration local and long run navigation. A first approach utilizes only reactive behaviors, solving very well local navigation. It also gives a partial solution to long run navigation in a simple environment, with only two rooms, doing it without path definition. A complete solution for an environment with many rooms is developed adding to the previous approach more behaviors that will take care of path definition and control. A linear graph, having the passages as landmarks, structures the environment representation and is the basis for the algorithm of path definition that gives an efficient solution. The architecture has not a central planner and controller as in traditional deliberative architectures; planning and control arises from the independent parallel functioning of all the behaviors. The results demonstrate that the design achieved its objectives and some important points to improve it are shown.